


Tactile

by RenkonNairu



Series: Day Away [3]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Drama, Emotional Abuse, Gen, Male Friendship, Melodrama, Psychological Trauma, aftermath of abuse, new powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenkonNairu/pseuds/RenkonNairu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 2<br/>Superboy gets a new power... and some other stuff happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sabbatical

**Author's Note:**

> So, as everyone should know by now, Greg Weisman has confirmed that Kon's not gonna get TTK in CN's Young Justice series. Ever. Well, that sucks. Luckily, fan fiction gives us the opportunity to give it to him anyway.

"I'm just really sick of it."

Black Canary blinked, not understanding. Without a context the Superboy's statement sounded random, completely unconnected to their previous conversation. She rested her chin on her fist and waited for him to elaborate. Sitting in the green armchairs of the private lounge that was set aside for counseling and 'talking sessions', they both listened to the soft ticking of the clock on the far wall.

Finally, when it looked like Kon wasn't going to elaborate, Canary asked, "Sick of what?"

"People messing with my head." He said with all the grave seriousness of an undertaker. "Mind-control, manipulation, memory loss, control-words, life-like dream simulations… I'm just sick of it. When I left Cadmus I thought things would be different. A brave new world of freedom. But since then, all I've found is more of the same. Different names and faces, same old song and dance. Cadmus, Psimon, Lex, M'gann, these new guys… I'm just…" He placed a hand over his eyes, but Canary couldn't tell if it was to block the sight of sympathy on her face, or to hide unshed tears in his eyes. "I'm so sick of people messing with my head!"

Dinah blinked, her brain registering one name on his list she had not expected to hear. "M'gann?" She echoed. "Conner, did M'gann ever use her powers on you?"

The Superboy looked up suddenly, his hand falling from his eyes, and stared at Canary in alarm –as if he'd just let slip some vital piece of information he hadn't intended to. There was another pregnant pause between them, filled only by the ticking of the clock. Finally, he said, "I've asked before you to call me by my kryptonian name, Canary. I prefer 'Kon-El' or just 'Kon'. 'Conner' is a character from a TV show."

He was deflecting from the main issue and they both knew it. But Dinah wouldn't press. If Kon still didn't want to talk about his break-up with M'gann then it wasn't her place to force him. While it did bother her (and several members of the Team) that he never did tell anyone why he ended their four-year relationship, it was Kon and M'ganns's personal life and not anyone else's business. With a sigh, the Black Canary leaned back in her chair and ran a hand through her main of blond hair.

"I understand." She said at length. "We've all just been calling you 'Conner' for so long, it's the name that rolls off the tongue most easily. Even if he is just a character from a TV show." There was another pause, then Canary continued, "Kon, we all know your history with Cadmus and how they used the G-gnomes to control you. Why haven't you ever mentioned anything about just how much it still affects you until now?"

"It doesn't matter." He responded in a tone of forced casualness. "Its not like these things keep happening to only me. The entire Team got their memories erased in Bialya. The entire Team underwent Batman's Failsafe-sim. Red Arrow also had control words implanted in his mind. Robin and Lagoon Boy were also there when these newest guys put us in that dream-world whatever. It's never just me."

"That doesn't mean it affects you any less." Dinah once again leaned forward and placed a comforting hand on his knee. "Kon, its true you're never the only one involved in these episodes of mental manipulation. But the others don't have your history with psychic-abuse. The others aren't likely to be as affected by it as you. Why didn't you say anything until now?"

His eyes suddenly turned hard and defensive. "I'm not an invalid, Canary." He said. "I'm just… sick of it."

…

Not long after that session with Black Canary, Kon found himself out on the beach practicing his katas while soaking up some much appreciated yellow sunlight. It was one of those early spring days that were bright and sunny as a Disney happy ending, but still cold and windy as a Transylvanian horror night. The cold did not bother the Superboy, however, and he was more than comfortable kicking it on the beach in just combat boots and cargo-pants, sans a shirt –the better to absorb sunlight with.

Nightwing, however, came out in full costume, long-sleeves and all. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited or the Superboy to finish the set he was on. When he did, the former Robin said, "Canary has just recommended I put you on sabbatical."

"What?" The Superboy turned to regard his long-time friend and colleague.

"When I asked her why," continued the Nightwing, "she said she couldn't give details without your permission, but that we –all the mentors and Team leaders- have failed to notice a deep psychological issue that you –apparently- never had adequate opportunity to recover from since your liberation from Cadmus five years ago."

"Those aren't Canary's words." Kon said. It was an attempt to shift the train of the conversation onto an irrelevant tangent and they both knew it. It wouldn't work on the Nightwing, but the fact that the Superboy would even try a deflection was proof enough for the apprentice to the World's Greatest Detective that there really was a deeper issue that Kon did not want to discuss.

"No." He admitted. "They're my words, Canary wasn't quite as concise. Even so, I've decided to take her advice. As of this moment, you are a non-active member of the Team. You can relay communications and give Team support from here at the base just like Mal does, but you will not be going out on missions."

The demi-kryptonian was suddenly livid. "You can't do that to me!" He snarled. "This Team is my life! It's all I've ever known!"

The Nightwing was unphased. "We're just gonna skip right past the part where I point out that's not healthy either. Or that you're just being melodramatic. This Team isn't you're whole life. You've still got the farm in Kansas and Robin tells me you two have been hanging out outside of costume."

Kon gave a dismissive scoff.

Nightwing crossed the distance between them to pat the Superboy on the shoulder. "You've got the building blocks of a life outside of this Team, Kon. You should take this time to work on them." He turned to leave –going back inside to organize the next mission. Over his shoulder the Nightwing called. "At the very least you should take this time to relax. You look like you could use some rest."

Kon called after him, "I'm kryptonian, I don't need 'rest'!"

…

The Kent farmhouse had not been lived in since Martha Kent passed away two years ago. It was a natural death from old age, she passed away peacefully in her sleep. Clark had been in Metropolis at the time and he, Kon, had been at the Cave. Ma was discovered by Lana Lang-Ross whom came over to check on Martha from time to time. She called Lois immediately, whom called Clark and then called him.

Martha was buried with love, laid to rest next to Jonathan Kent whom Kon had never met. Pa died of a heart attack before he and Clark had reconciled on Watchtower that faithful New Years Eve. Kon lamented that greatly; he would have liked to have met Jonathan. From the stories that were told about him, the Superboy was pretty sure he would have liked Pa a lot.

The wake was held at the farmhouse and that was the last time Kon had seen the place so full of people and lights and music and life. After that, he helped Clark do a very thorough cleaning of the house, spread dust sheets over all the furniture, closed the storm shutters and arranged for the sale of the farm's livestock. Clark would never let go of the farm, he and Lois –to this day- argue about retiring in Smallville or staying in Metropolis. But with no one to actually work the farm, the herd and the chickens had to go.

After that the place always seemed so… empty to Kon. Not 'dead' exactly, just sleeping. Almost a hundred acres of farmable land and it always felt so empty now that the Kents were gone. Clark would rent a couple of the fields out to local farmers every season, but it just wasn't the same.

These were the thoughts running through Kon's mind as he unlocked the kitchen door and stepped inside.

Wolf hung back hesitantly. Ma had never approved of him lumbering about her kitchen (not that the kobra venom enhanced wolf would ever be so ungraceful as to actually 'lumber'). Even after two years, the Wolf still remembered the dreaded spray bottle, and how it would torment him as punishment for daring to step a paw into Martha Kent's domain. She may have been elderly and arthritic, weak and fragile compared to the males of the Kent pack, but there was no doubt in the Wolf's mind that she was the Alpha Female.

Kon looked back at his four-legged friend sitting strait and dignified on the porch –pointedly remaining outside. "Alright." He groaned. "I'll go open the front door."

He tossed his travel bag down on the counter and made his way through the dining room and kitchen to the entrance way. Wolf was already waiting for him when he opened the front door. He trotted inside, his tail wagging behind him in a very dog-like way.

Together they pulled the dustsheets off the couch, coffee table and TV. The power was disconnected, but a trip to the Ross' to borrow their phone and a call to the power company later promised that he could watch the TV static in approximately six hours. Kon thanked Lana and Pete and made a point of playing with their infant son, Clark-Peter, before returning to the farmhouse.

The water and gas were also disconnected, but that didn't bother Kon all that much. The property still had an old well and pump, which he used to fill a pitcher of water for himself and a bowl for Wolf. At least, the lack of water didn't bother him until after he was reminded the bathrooms needed running water. Another trip to the Ross' and he was promised water within another six hours. Pete laughed at how city-people took everything for granted. Lana just laughed and ruffled his hair. She gave him a helping of cornbread and meatloaf before he, once again, returned to the Kent farmhouse.

Wolf ate the meatloaf. Kon ate the cornbread… and eight hours later, all the lights in the house flicked on. They had power and after a quick check of the sink and stove, they had water and gas too.

Later that evening, Kon washed his face in the upstairs bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror for a long moment. "I look fine." He informed his mirror-world doppelganger. "I don't need rest. 'Wing doesn't know what he's talking about."

His reflection did not answer him back. It was just a mirror and, in fact, could not speak.

Although, something odd did happen that went completely unnoticed by the Superboy. As he went to hang the washcloth on the bar to dry, he missed. But the small piece of towel did not fall to the bathroom floor as one would expect it to. No. Instead, the washcloth hung in the air for a moment or two before curling one end of itself around the bar and hanging to dry.

…

Kon spent the night giving the farmhouse a thorough cleaning and assessing what maintenance the rest of the property and grounds needed.

Clark would come down one day every summer to give the place a good cleaning, but the last time he'd done that had been last summer. It was now spring again and another year's worth of dust and age had mucked the place up again.

Kon found families and clutches of mice and lizards living in the attic and basement (respectively), both the front and back porch were in need of a new coat of paint. The decks needed to be sanded, and the railing on the back porch had a very bad dry-rot to it and needed to be replaced. The barn was infested with termites and needed to be torn down. The chicken coop and cow's milking pens had long since become lost causes and the churt driveway was deplorably eroded.

Kon made out a list of everything he'd need from the hardware store and then a second list of everything he'd need from the Fortress.

The next day he did not go into town to the hardware store, or up north to the Fortress, however. Instead, he went back to the Cave.

…

"Roast lizard on a stick?" Kon offered Mal by way of inviting himself into the semi-circle of holo-screens.

The former classmate looked at the offered vermin on a skewer, his nose wrinkling. "Are you serious?"

"Its not poisonous." Kon assured him innocently. "I checked. I found them living in my basement."

Mal was silent a moment. Then, "I'm not even going to ask."

"Oh, you know us country folk…" The Superboy teased. Then, turning his attention to the projected displays, his playful mood melted away and he was in 'serious mode' again. "So, what've we got today?"

"I'm just putting together the visual aids packet for Nightwing's next mission briefing."

Kon spent the next two hours helping Mal (or hindering Mal, depending on your point of view) put together a presentation for Nightwing. More than once, the Superboy interrupted the work to state, "I should really be going on this one. They might need someone with infrared vision."

"They've got goggles for that." Mal would reply.

Some time later, Kon would begin again. "What if they need someone with super-hearing? They might need me on this mission."

"I'm sure they can mange."

"They'll need someone strong enough to break through this barrier."

"There are other ways to bypass a barrier."

"I should really be going on this mission, they might-"

"Kon!" Mal cut him off. "You are not on active duty right now. I'm sure you would be great on this mission. With you infrared eyes, and your sensitive ears, and battering-ram of a head and shoulder. But the boss-bird says you don't go on missions right now. So you're not going on this mission."

"I just think-"

"That's it! I'll give you a mission!" Mal snarled.

The Superboy was instantly silenced.

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to run, or hop, or whatever it is that you do, over to the Rite Aide in Happy Harbor and purchase a bottle of aspirin. Then, find the nearest Starbucks and get me a venti chai latte, non-fat, no foam, with two pumps of mocha and whipped cream on top. Save your receipts. Do you understand your mission parameters?"

Kon did not actually answer, he just kinda growled.

…

When Kon returned with aspire and latte in hand, it was to find the rest of the Team already assembled. He didn't so much as pass the items to Mal as he did thrust them into the man's hands to show his displeasure. In less than a day it felt like he had turned onto the Jimmy Olsen of the group –except Jimmy still got to go out on cases.

"Thanks, Kon." He said, sounding far less vexed than he had when the Superboy left. Apparently, with the demi-kryptonian out of the Cave, the former classmate had been able to not only complete the presentation for Nightwing, but also level-up his orc in World of Warcraft. He was feeling rather pleased with himself. "Hey, after the mission we'll still have to compile whatever data they take back and sum up an abstract to be placed on top of the stack of their individual reports for Nightwing. Wanna hang around for that?"

Kon, on the other hand, not so much. "No." He said. "I've got maintenance to do on the house and some stuff I need to pick up from the Fortress."

"That's cool, I understand." Mal did not seem the least bit disappointed.

…

From the Fortress, Kon grabbed lead paneling for the storm-cellar floor, near-invulnerable shingling for the roof of the main-house, and a special kind of paint Clark had designed himself for the deck and patio. He also took something that was not for the upkeep of the Kent farmhouse and property, but rather for himself.

It was only half-true what he shouted to Nightwing on the beach a few days ago. Kryptonians might not need as much rest as humans did, but they still needed rest. Between three to four hours out of every twenty-four hour cycle to be exact. Kon had been up for well over thirty-six hours and had no desire to go to sleep when he got back to the house, and so the thing he took for himself was a bottle of stimulant. Something designed to work on Clark's kryptonian physiology. It worked on him too, though not quite as well thanks to his human blood and he wasn't sure yet if it had any negative side effects. But Kon had been taking it almost since he Tim and La'gaan had returned from their last mission together.

The mission where they were all trapped in a dream-world where they had no powers and the Justice League never existed. It had been Kon's second time undergoing a psychic trial like that. An artificially induced dream… another form of mental manipulation… he hated it. But it wasn't just those instances that prompted Kon to stave off sleep.

He never told anyone why he ended his relationship with M'gann. Everyone had their own theories and assumptions. Kon never confirmed any of them, but he didn't deny them either. This, of course, just led to more speculation. But the truth was… the truth was M'gann had tried to control his mind –just like Cadmus had, just like Lex had. Well, obviously not just like they had. Cadmus suppressed his free-will. Lex implanted control words. M'gann… M'gann tried to erase his memory.

He had been asleep at the time, asleep in her bed of all places. His mind was at rest, his barriers and guards down. He was at home, in the bed of the woman he loved, asleep in the afterglow of rapturous lovemaking. Kon had no reason to feel in danger or even in just suspicious. But he and M'gann had also been arguing for several weeks prior to that moment –arguing over her misuse of her powers against enemies. And so, in that moment, when his guards and barriers were down, she had taken the opportunity to slip into his mind and erase the fact that he was ever mad at her to begin with.

At first, the touch had been gentle –more like a caress. His subconscious thought he was about to enjoy some very imaginative dream-sex (she did that from time to time). But as her consciousness flitted and rummaged through his own, Kon's subconscious realized it was not a caress or an invitation for an erotic mind-link –it was an invasion.

He had woken-up instantly.

One strong hand seizing her wrist with perhaps more force than he should have. Kon demanded what she was doing, and why, and how could she, didn't she know what their intimacy meant to him, etc. To all of these questions she had only said that she did what she did because she 'loved him so much'.

Kon didn't believe it. If she did love him as she claimed she would not have violated him like that. So, he did the only thing that made sense given the situation. He walked out. Walked out of her bedroom and out of their relationship. He never told anyone why he left her or what she did, but he had to leave. For his own mental and emotional wellbeing, he had to get out. Like Lois always seemed to be telling her younger sister, Lucy, 'its never selfish to take care of yourself'.

Kon was trying to take care of himself now. Sleep was when he was weakest against telepathic influence. So, sleep was what he must avoid.

He measured out one dosage of the kryptonian stimulant and shot it like tequila, then chased it with a glass of apple juice. His body shuddered for a moment as it registered the foreign chemical. When he once again had control over his body, Kon replaced the lid on the bottle of stimulant and stowed it back in its proper place in Clark's little 'pharmacy closet'.

As he was exiting the room, Kon experienced the oddest sensation. His head swam almost as if he had motion sickness or vertigo, but kryptonians didn't get vertigo so that couldn't have been it. He placed a hand against the corridor wall to steady himself and could have sworn he felt the robots that maintained the Fortress working in the room beyond. It lasted for only a moment and so Kon could not be sure that he hadn't just imagined it. He was working off of no sleep after all. The demi-kryptonian decided that if it happened again, he would take something to help him focus on top of the stimulant and thought nothing more of it. He took what he needed for the house and returned to Smallville.

…

It was well past four in the morning when Tim called.

Kon was re-shingling the roof and watching the sun come up (he was a multi-tasker) when his civilian phone rang. The touch screen proclaimed it to be a private number, but there were only four people in the world who had his phone number (maybe seven if you counted people he didn't give the number to but might have it anyway because they were bats). One of those four people was Clark, whom was off planet at the moment. Another was Lois, but it was roughly six in the morning in Metropolis and Lois Lane-Kent was not a 'morning person'. The third was M'gann but since beginning her relationship with La'gaan, she never called him anymore. That left Tim.

"Hey." Kon answered.

"Hay is for horses, farm boy." The Boy Wonder answered back.

"Don't got horses here." Kon reminded him.

"That's a shame." Tim yawned. "So, anyway, I just got back from the mission and I had this great idea, are you ready? …Breakfast!"

"What a revolutionary idea!" Kon exclaimed with mock awe. "They can put it between dinner and brunch!"

The two shared a snort of laughter.

"So, I still gotta shower and change into civies." Continued the younger boy. "By that time it'll be about seven'ish on the eastern seaboard. I was thinking New York, Jewish bagels with various toppings."

"Sounds good to me."

"Cool. I'll check Yelp and see where's good. Meet you by the zetta-tube."

"Okay."

…


	2. Tremors

M'gann didn't watch 'Hello, Magen' anymore. Not really, anyway. She might pull up a specific clip or two to show to someone, or maybe sit through a single episode when she was feeling nostalgic. But, overall, she had moved on to other sit-coms and teen melodramas. So, it was an episode of 'Saved By the Bell' that Black Canary interrupted when she knocked on the martian girl's door to talk.

"Come in." M'gann called as she paused the screen and shifted her form to one most humans would feel more comfortable with.

The door slid open and Black Canary entered, still not exactly sure how to open up this particular dialogue. "I'm not disturbing you, am I?"

"I wasn't doing anything important." The martian girl shook her head.

"Do you mind if I sit down?" Canary sat next to M'gann on the bed.

"Is something wrong?" This was not the first time the Black Canary had come to speak with her privately and the martian girl quickly ran through a checklist in her mind of all the things she had been reprimanded for in the past because they were inappropriate conduct in a human society. "Did I do something I shouldn't have again? If so, I'm sorry."

"That's just it." Dinah answered. "I'm not exactly sure… I heard something recently that worries me, and I was hoping you could explain it to me or help me understand it."

"Well, I'm not sure what kind of help I can be…" M'gann adjusted her position on the bed to be facing Black Canary. "But I can try. Shoot."

"I was speaking with someone recently –and I'm sorry, I can't tell you who they were- and during our conversation, this person listed off the names of people who manipulated, or tried to manipulate that person's mind. Your name was one of the names on that list. I was hoping you could help me understand why that might be."

M'gann's eyes when wide for a moment, then narrowed dangerously. Her mouth becoming a single thin line with the corners down turned in a frown of displeasure and barely contained rage. Dinah had never seen such an expression on the martian gril's face before… and it worried her. M'gann was usually so sweet, kind, and gentle. The martian girl stood. She crossed to the door and pressed the release for it to slide open.

"I'd like you to go now, Canary." She said. "I'm sorry. I can't help you understand why Conner would tell you that."

Dinah had been hero'ing for a long time and she knew how to recognize when a situation had suddenly shifted. While she doubted Miss Martian would ever actually harm her, she also knew that she just did not have enough information to work off of. The best thing to do was to take the offered out and revisit the issue from another angle when she had a better idea of just what was going on.

As she passed the martian girl, the Black Canary could not help but mention, "M'gann, I did not say this person was Conner."

She made a hasty retreat after that, more worried now than she had been after her initial conversation with the Superboy.

…

Kon liked Long Island.

It wasn't nearly as dense and congested as New York city proper. The buildings weren't as tall, the sun not as obscured. The streets were generally cleaner. Overall, the place felt like one large sub-urb. To spite common pop-culture stigmas, Kon liked sub-urbs. He would have liked to have grown-up in one (if he were the type of creature that could grow up, that is). Tim had grown-up in a sub-urb, but it was a Gotham sub-urb, which is another animal entirely.

The two sat in a window booth in a Jewish deli. Tim, nibbling on an egg bagel with lox and cream cheese with capers on top, and Kon tearing into a garlic and onion pizza bagel with no meat.

"I mean, seriously now, who doesn't put meat on a pizza?" The demi-kryptonian complained through a mouthful of food.

Tim just shook his head. "Its not kosher."

"Its not like I asked them to throw a slice of ham on here." Kon insisted. "Just maybe a little sausage and pepperoni would be nice."

"Its not the type of meat that's the problem." The Boy Wonder explained. "They can't mix meat with dairy. Since pizza's got cheese it can't have meat."

"How do you know?"

"I read." Tim shrugged and took a bite out of his lox and cream cheese. "You know, in Israel they've got restaurants with two separate kitchens for preparing meat dishes and dairy dishes. 'Cause they're not supposed to use the same cookware for both either."

"Okay, we are never going out to eat in Israel." Kon said. "I like my meet and cheese."

"Ya know, Kon, you're not very cosmopolitan."

"No, I'm really not." Agreed the Superboy as if that were something to be proud of.

"I guess I'll just have to fix that." Sighed the Boy Wonder.

The demi-kryptonian paused in mid-bite to look at the youngest Robin. He swallowed the bit that was in his mouth and said, "Suddenly I feel very apprehensive."

Tim only grinned. "What's the matter, clone boy, don't you trust me?"

Kon grinned in return. "You're a bat, Tim. One never trusts a bat fully."

"Smart." Nodded the Boy Wonder. "But you can trust me. I promise I won't make an ass of you. –At least, not on purpose."

Kon snorted. "Well thanks. That makes me feel a lot better."

Tim reached across the table to slap him playfully on the shoulder. "C'mon, it'll be fun!"

"Nighwing used to say that a lot back when he was Robin. It always ended with one or more of the mentors mad at us." Said the Superboy. "Why don't we put a pin in that and talk about something else."

"Alright, fine." The Boy Wonder took another bite of his bagel before asking, "What's the scariest movie you've ever seen?"

"The scariest?" Kon echoed. "Well, I haven't really seen many movies… but the one that frightened me to most would have to be Total Recall –both of them, original and remake."

"Really?" Tim raised a skeptical eyebrow behind his dark sunglasses. "But that's not a scary movie at all, it's an action flick."

Kon remained silent and did not elaborate.

Tim took a moment to ponder what his friend had just told him. He ran over the plot of the movie in his head and related it to what he knew of the Superboy with special thought given to his past. Then he reached a conclusion. "Mental programming."

Kon said nothing. Only nodded.

They lapsed into a sullen silence after that. The demi-kryptonian seemed to withdraw into himself, indulging in whatever morose introspection he indulged in when reminded of his less than ideal early life at Cadmus. Tim studied him from across the table. The forlorn expression of his brow as he stared out the window, the almost mechanical way he continued to eat his bagel, as if trying to force an appearance of casualness. His free hand rested on the table, fingers spread, unmoving. As if the Superboy were making a conscious effort not to ball it into a fist.

'Anxiety.' Concluded the Boy Wonder. "Nightwing's right." He said. "You do need rest."

Kon looked at him. "Kryptonians don't need rest."

Tim shook his head. "I don't mean physical rest. I mean, like… Okay, this is gonna sound weird, but bear with me. You and Clark both usually always seem to have this 'glow' about you, almost as if you're lit by this inner light that can't help but shine through. But recently, since we got back from our last mission together, that glow about you has kinda been waning. You seem… dimmer than you used to."

There was a beat of silence.

Then, "You're right, Tim, that does sound weird."

The Boy Wonder set his food down and focused his full attention on the Superboy. "Look, Kon, Gotham is a really dark place. I don't mean literally dark, I mean it figuratively. Even really good people have a darkness about them. When you live in the dark, when you grow-up in the dark, you learn to recognize light when you see it. I recognized it the first moment I saw you the day 'Wing took me to meet the Team. You were rude and snarly and angry at everything, but you still managed somehow to shine."

"Dude, that sounds so gay."

Tim sighed and leaned back in his booth. "Yeah, I guess it does when you say it out loud." He shrugged. "But anyway, I know some Yoga techniques that might help you relax and get back in touch with your inner 'light'. And, it would fit in nicely with helping you to become more cosmopolitan."

"Yoga?" Echoed the demi-kryptonian. "Uh, no thanks. I'll pass. I'm not really down with the whole dirt-first granola munching hippy crowd."

Tim shook his head. "Shows how little you know."

…

They walked each other back to the zetta-tube and bid 'farewell' there. With Tim returning to Gotham and Kon to Smallville.

It was getting close to noon (Kansas time) when M'gann showed up, out of nowhere, and pissed-off to all high holy hell.

Kon had just finished re-shingling the roof and was about to climb into the old pick-up truck for a trip into town when he first detected the bio-ship. Martian bio-ships –for the most part- ran silently. He didn't so much hear it as he did feel it. A slight prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck, a nearly undetectable shift in the wind. He shifted his vision from the normal human spectrum to infrared and sure enough, there was the bio-ship coasting over the fallow fields. Kon stepped out of the truck and crossed his arms over his chest, not sure what exactly to expect.

The ship came to a hovering stop almost right on top of him. The lower hatch opened, like a black hole in thin air, and M'gann drifted down. She landed in front of him, her feet planted, her own arms likewise crossed over her chest. She glared at him, auburn eyes blazing.

Kon was about to ask what she was doing here, but before he could get out even one syllable he was cut off.

"So, I see you finally told someone." She snapped, and the demi-kryptonian had no idea to what she could possibly be referring. "And here I thought you were trying to be all noble or whatever. 'Protecting' me from the other mentors, or the League, or however self-righteous pricks like you justify themselves. Now I see you were just waiting. –For what, I have no idea."

There was a beat of silence in which the Superboy did nothing more than just stare at her.

Then, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't you!" She snapped again. "Canary came to see me today. She said someone told her I tried to manipulate their mind. Who else could that 'someone' be if not you?"

Here Kon turned defensive and returned her hostility with some of his own. "I don't know. Maybe one of your mind-rape victims recovered enough to call you on your bullshit! I am not the only person you ever tried to brain-bend. It's why we were fighting in the first place! Or don't you remember? Instead of working it out and compromising like a healthy functional couple, you decided to just force me to forget I ever had a problem with what you were doing. With what you're still doing!"

"What I'm doing is for the Team!" M'gann insisted, but then stopped herself. She was getting sidetracked. She had not come here to dredge up that old argument. "Look, you disapprove of how I conduct myself. I get that. You're still pissy about what I tried to do to you. I'm sorry you're such a little girl. But we've gone our separate ways and its not like I'm hurting anyone innocent. I'm with La'gaan now and am moving on from our break-up. Don't make waves. I'm asking you, don't stir up trouble."

"Asking?" He snarled at her. Around the soles of his boots the churt of the driveway shuddered almost noticeably. "It sounds more like you're commanding me. Don't order me around, M'gann. Nothing gives you that right, not even when we were dating. You were my girlfriend, not my master! Now you're not even that."

Whatever retort she might have had planned remained unsaid as her attention shifted from him to the ground around his feet. Something wasn't right here. She sensed… but it couldn't be! It felt almost like a telekinetic field. Her eyes fell to the churt around his boots and noted how it seemed to shudder and undulate with his flocculating emotions. Something wasn't right here. Telekinesis was not a kryptonian ability. He shouldn't have it. But then again, he was only half-kryptonian, wasn't he, and haven't there been cases of humans developing telekinetic abilities after undergoing mental trauma? The martian girl wasn't sure.

"I've said all I came to say." She told him, floating back up to the bio-ship. Before disappearing through the hatch she sent a telekinetic probe of her own to get a better sense this new TK field. It didn't feel like a normal telekinetic field. It seemed more connected to corporeal sense of touched rather than the spectral psychic ability it usually was. She would need to meditate on this newest of developments before she could grok its fullness. "Just enjoy your vacation and don't make trouble for me."

She left before he could say anything in response.

Kon watched her fly away through his infrared vision. When she was gone he switched back to normal sight and looked at the driveway in which he stood. The churt was still mostly eroded, but the area around which they had stood during their conversation was almost perfectly level in a small circle around him. Kon could only wonder, 'Did she do that?'

Some time later, when he was at the Smallville lumber yard filling out an order he remembered, 'Oh snaps! I did let her name slip when talking to Canary! Crap!'

…

Dinah decided to speak to La'gaan next.

The Lagoon Boy mentioned to her a desire to make peace with the Superboy, and Black Canary was optimistic that they might one day become friends if they could just resolve the one issue between them. Namely, the issue of M'gann M'orzz. Canary wanted to know if La'gaan had yet had a chance to speak with Kon and if so, had the demi-kryptonian opened up to him about M'gann?

La'gaan was not in the base. After asking around a few times, the Canary learned that he had taken a leisurely swim in the ocean. She waited for him on the beach. Perhaps it was not the most efficient use of her time, but Dinah did not want to miss the Lagoon Boy. She couldn't quite explain why, call it 'a gut feeling', but she had a sinking suspicion that if M'gann got to the atlantian first, she would somehow influence him into giving an inaccurate testimony.

It was early evening, the sun just beginning to dip behind the mountains when the Lagoon Boy finally emerged from the waves, dripping wet and carrying spoils from the sea. He stopped short when he saw the Black Canary waiting for him.

"Oh. Hi, Canary." He said awkwardly. "Uh… did I miss a mission briefing or something? Am I in trouble?"

"No." She assured him. Why did the members of the Team always assume they were in trouble whenever a mentor wanted to talk to them? "Nothing's wrong. I just wanted to follow up on what you said during our last session. Did you have a chance to speak with Superboy yet?"

Canary turned as he came up beside her and the two began walking back to the Cave together.

"No." Admitted the Lagoon Boy. He shifted the load of shells he carried to a more comfortable position. "I've asked him if we could talk, but he always says he's to busy."

"I see. That must be frustrating for you." She offered sympathetically. "So, you still have no idea what happened between him and M'gann?"

"Not a clue." He lamented.

Dinah pursed her lips in thought. She did not like this one bit. Something happened between Conner and M'gann, something big that had driven him to end their relationship and something drastic enough for the over-protective mini-Boy Scout to want to keep the others from getting involved. It had been an accident when he'd dropped M'gann's name in their conversation. He had not meant to bring it to Canary's attention and when she asked about it, he quickly shut down and changed the subject.

When she went to M'gann to learn her side of it –or even just to learn what 'it' was- the martian girl also clammed up and asked her to leave. Now, La'gaan was telling her that Conner was also avoiding speaking to him about what happened between him and M'gann. No matter from which direction she looked at it, it was clear to Canary that something big was going on with those two (possibly three, depending how deeply involved La'gann had gotten with M'gann) and she could not shake a bad feeling about it.

One thing was sure. Whatever it was, she had to keep it mostly contained. La'gaan might already be in to deep with whatever it was, but if he wasn't it was better to keep him out of it, even if it meant keeping him in the dark for the moment.

"Why don't you wait off on pressing him about it." She suggested. "He's on sabbatical right now, recovering from emotional stress. Now isn't the best time to grill him about his ex-girlfriend anyway. After this is resolved then you can talk. I still think you two could be friends."

…

That evening Kon studied Ma Kent's old recipe cards with all the careful scrutiny of a doctoral candidate. He was feeling down, M'gann's unscheduled visit having left him depressed and very, very anxious. He had not even bothered to unload his shopping from the truck. He just took in the perishables and essential items he'd need that night and covered the rest with a tarp.

He missed Ma, she had always been able to make him feel better no matter what the trouble was, and he wished Clark were home. Here on Earth where he belonged. After breaking up with M'gann, his genetic parent turned adopted big brother became a real comfort to him. But he had neither at the moment. Ma was dead and buried and Clark was over a galaxy away on planet Rimbor. All Kon had to comfort himself with was the Kent family recipe for apple pie.

There was just one problem: Kon could not cook. Even if his life depended on it.

He scrutinized the recipe. Followed every direction exactly as it had been written. But still, his crust came out to dry, the filling to runny, the overall pie just not right.

Kon ate it anyway.

Sitting at the dining room table, a trivet under the still hot pie pan, fork in hand. The demi-kryptonian consumed about half of the failed pastry before he finally gave up and set his fork down on his napkin.

He once again went over the day's events in his mind. Breakfast with Tim had been great, but seemed so far away and long ago now when compared to his impromptu conversation with M'gann. He had loved her so much once, had trusted her so much once, would have been willing to go through hell and back for her once. But that had been before… almost a year ago now… Now, all she did was fill him with fear. Loath though he was to admit it, the Superboy was scared of the martian girl. Terrified actually. She had a power over him that there was no defense against and she'd already shown that she would not hesitate to use that power on him.

Earlier, when she had shown up with no warning, ordering him to back off, let sleeping dogs lay, don't make trouble. He had just been waiting for her reach out with her power and silence him permanently. To tear into his inner webs and destroy his mind. Render him a drooling, mindless vegetable like she had done to so many others. It had been an incredible feat of will not to allow himself to tremble in front of her. Kon did not want her to see just how much she terrified him. He didn't want to show his weakness.

But he was trembling now.

The demi-kryptonian balled his hands into fists and shut his eyes, attempting to get his body under control once again. It worked. His shaking subsided. But then an odd sound filled his ears, like something small and metallic tapping on the wooden dining table. The Superboy opened his eyes to find that his fork had somehow drifted off its napkin and was trembling on the rustic oak table.

His fear returned full force –the fork's movements became more rapid. "M'gann?" He called to the otherwise empty house. "Is that you? Are you here? Have you come to finish what you started when we broke-up?"

The only response he got was to have Wolf trot into the dinning room. The kobra venom enhanced predator glanced from the trembling fork to the terrified Superboy and back again. Then his gaze settled and he stared in confusion at Kon, not comprehending why his scent was so thick with fear.

"Please stop." He again addressed the empty house. "You have my attention. M'gann…? Stop it!" The demi-kryptonian gave up on trying to communicate with an empty house and returned his attention to the fork. "Stop!" He commanded. "Stop it!"

The fork jumped a few inches in the air and contorted, bending in the middle, each prong twisting a different way and the handle spiraling into a disfigured quarkscrew. It fell back on the table with a CLUNK. There it remained. Unmoving.

Hesitantly, the Superboy reached a hand out and gave it a tentative poke. It was just ordinary silver, disfigured and misshapen now, but still just silver. Kon breathed a sigh of relief and sagged in his chair. He took a few calming breaths and tried to relax, getting his mind under control. Now that he was in a more rational state of mind, the demi-kryptonian realized it was ridiculous to think that M'gann had come back to the farmhouse just to prank him with a move out of Poltergeist (or the Shinning, he'd never seen either). He still made a mental note of the time to double check the Cave's security cameras and zetta-logs just to make sure.

"I'm becoming as paranoid as a bat." He muttered. This elicited a quizzical look from the Wolf.

Kon threw the remainder of his failed pie in the trash. The mangled fork he saved as evidence –of what, Kon had no idea.

…


	3. Aversion

Kon made a quick trip to the Fortress before making his way to the Cave. He fished the bottle of stimulant out of the pharmaceutical closet and took another shot. It once again made the demi-kryptonian shudder, just as it had last time, only the tremor lasted longer this time and when it was over his heart was hammering against his chest.

'Stimulant.' He reminded himself. Increased heart-rate would be a common side-effect. The Superboy took a few measured breaths, just as Canary had taught him during their martial arts training. When his pulse tapered off to a more tempered rate, he sighed and slumped against the wall. "Son of a bitch…"

One of the robots that maintained the Fortress approached him. "Are you alright, sir?" It asked in an overly polite synthetic voice with just the slightest hint of a country accent. "May I be of assistance?"

"No." He groaned, still resting his head against the wall. "Thank you, Number 2. I'm fine."

…

It was early morning by the time Kon finally made his way over to the Cave.

No one who lived there was awake yet and no one who worked there had yet arrived. Kon went strait to the main computer room and pulled up the surveillance history for the previous day, the zetta-logs and the hangar out-going and in-coming records.

According to the hangar records, the bio-ship left the Cave only once that day –around noon, about the time M'gann had shown up at the farm- and it returned less than an hour later. If M'gann had left the Cave again, she did not take the ship. But she hadn't zetta'd either. According to both the Cave's own zetta-logs as well as the master-logs saved to the Watchtower mainframe, Miss Martian had not used the zetta-transporters at all that day. Security cameras also showed her in the Cave around the time of his little episode with the fork. So then… if it hadn't been her, who (or what, he supposed) had done it?

Kon withdrew the mangled silver fork from his pocket and set it on the main computer consol, right below the projected holo-screens displaying the security feeds and zetta-logs. There was a puzzle here, but he just didn't know how to solve it. Detective work had never been one of his strong suits. For one brief fleeting moment, the demi-kryptonian thought about bringing Nightwing in on it, or maybe Tim since they had become such close friends. But that would also mean telling them about M'gann, which would only place them in danger. So, no, he couldn't involve anyone else. It was bad enough that he'd made that one slip to Canary.

Kon didn't know what he was going to do about that, but he knew that he had to do something. Black Canary was by far his favorite of the mentors (yes, he liked her even better than Clark, actually a lot better than Clark, but that was a melodrama for another day). The Superboy did not like the idea of inadvertently placing her in harms way.

According to J'onn, M'gann was one of the most powerful telepaths he'd ever encountered. She easily had enough power to mind-crush the whole Team. All she needed was a push… Kon did not want to give her that push. If she at all felt like she was being backed into a corner, she would fight back. Her appearance at the farm yesterday was evidence enough of that.

It was ironic. M'gann had once said that her greatest fear was people assuming she was a monster simply because of the way her natural white-martian form looked. Now Kon was starting to perceive her as a 'monster', but it had nothing to do with her natural form. Her greatest fear was coming true, but not for the reason she thought it would. What was that called? A 'self-fulfilling prophesy'? Or was it 'dramatic irony'? Kon never really could keep those two straight.

Footsteps from the corridor outside told him the residents of the Cave were stirring. Kon quickly grabbed his mangled fork, re-pocketed it and closed the open displays before the computer room door slid open to reveal Mal –still in his pajamas- holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a folder of hard-copies in another.

"Oh." He paused in the doorway upon seeing Kon. "You're here. That's great." Mal passed the demi-kryptonian his stack of papers. "These need to be transcribed into the computer. Be sure to save them as 'MIS Gamma' and then the date. After you've done that, add it to the mission folder for the past week, click the 'Archive' tab and hit 'Send Batch'. That will transmit and save the mission logs for the past week to the Watchtower's mainframe. After that, Nightwing wants us to do a mass-media sift, searching the keywords 'meta-gene', 'partner', and 'light'. When you find a promising hit, save it to research file 'Carpet Bomb' and 'Wing will go through it later. If you can't tell what might be significant and what's not, ask me. Or, if you don't wanna do that, there's always data processing that needs to be done. You're good at number-crunching and statistical analysis, right?"

The Superboy could only stare at him. "Whoa, Mal, you just said a bunch of stuff I didn't understand."

The other man sighed. "Never mind. Just make a run to Starbucks and get me a venti chai, non-fat, no foam, with two pumps of mocha and whipped cream on top. And, of course, save the receipt."

…

So, he had gone from being the Boy of Steel, resident muscle and meat-shield of the Team, to… the coffee boy.

The rest of the Cave was awake and up by the time Kon returned with Mal's Starbucks order. Gar was on the couch, a bowl of cereal with soymilk in front of him, watching his morning cartoons. La'gaan perched on one of the stools at the island, waiting patiently for breakfast to be put down in front of him. M'gann bustled around the kitchen, turning over bacon, mixing pancake batter and slicing fruit. She looked up when he entered and their eyes met across the room. She held his gaze for a moment, her auburn eyes boring into his own crystal-blue ones. No words were exchanged, but her message was clear. 'Don't stir-up trouble.'

M'gann dropped her gaze only when Gar exclaimed, "Oh! You're back!"

The little changeling morphed into a flying squirrel and launched himself at the Superboy, landing squarely over the man's face.

"I'm happy to see you to." Kon muttered into a belly of green fur.

The Beast Boy then shifted into a parakeet and perched on top of the demi-kryptonian's ebony haired head where he dug his little talons in and did not seem to have the slightest intention of moving.

La'gaan leaned back in his stool, holding onto the counter for balance and commented, "Hey, that bird's got a chum on his ass."

"La'gaan!" M'gann was quick to reprimand him. "Don't say 'ass'!"

Kon reached his free hand up to stroke Gar's green-feathered wing. "I don't ever wanna hear you talk like that." He said. "Okay?"

"Yeah, sure." Gar gave a bird-shrug. Honestly, he'd heard other members of the Team say worse while on missions. Cursing was nothing new to him.

"Alright, now go back to your cartoons. I've gotta give this to Mal."

The little parakeet fluttered back to the couch where he promptly turned back into a boy. Just in time for the commercial break to end. Sadly, not in enough time before his cereal turned to mush.

The Superboy disappeared down the corridor and into the computer room where he deposited Mal's chai latte on the console next to him.

"Is there anything else you'd like me to do?" He asked. "Pick up your dry cleaning, maybe? Or, make photo copies."

"No, I think we're good for now." Mal sipped his drink with appreciation. It was so much better than the Cave's coffee. "You can go do whatever it is that you did before in between missions. I'll call you on your comm if I need you."

…

His JLA comm did not buzz all day.

But his civilian cell phone did ring.

Kon was tearing out the railing to the back porch when his pocket began to play the Duck Tails theme song –Lois had insisted on programming her own ringtone so Kon (and Clark as well) would always know it was her. She wanted one particular verse to announce herald calls.

'…Might solve a mystery, or re-write history! Duck Tails. Whoo-'

"Hi, Lois." He answered while using his free hand to continue to rip out the old wood railing.

"Hey, Kid." Lois' voice came back in that tone of crisp urgency mingled with excitement that always meant she was on the trail of a hot tip that could turn into a hot story that would probably get her shot at, or thrown off a building, or tied-up and thrown in the bay, or knee-capped by the mob, etc. "Listen, what are you doing tonight?"

"Why, Mrs. Superman, did you just ask me out on a date?" Joked the Superboy.

"Har-har. I don't date minors, Kid. Anyway, I'm working on a big weapons smuggling bust down at the bay. My sources say a deal's gonna go down tonight and I figured I could use a little back-up. But Clark's off-planet and Gangbuster is busy with his actual day-job this week –some youth retreat or something. That makes you the obvious choice. So, are you in?"

"Wait a minuet, I'm your third choice?" Kon paused in his work on the porch rail to gape at his phone.

"Oh, don't sound so butt-hurt." Lois scoffed. "You don't live in Metropolis, Gangbuster does. So, are you in? It might even turn out to be connected to Lex. Wouldn't you just love to be in on a bust that implicates him?"

'Yes.' And Kon hated it that he was so predictable and easy to manipulate. "Alright, Lois, I'll do it. But only because if you die I wanna be able to tell Clark I did everything I possibly could have done to prevent it when he gets back."

"Alright, no need to get all gushy. Meet me by pier 31 in the south docs just inside Hobs Bay."

…

The sound of metal against metal rent the otherwise serene evening air of the Hobs Bay shipping docs. To one observing from afar they would see a large freight-tanker listing as it was moored to the pier. Perhaps our hypothetical observer would also see a few shipping containers cascade into the otherswie still waters to a chorus of metallic CLANKs and very moist SPLASHes. But they could not see the pair that was currently running along the deck of said ship, trying to dodge shipping containers the size of semi-trucks, while attempting to out-run a giant battle-robot.

"Goddamnit, Lois!" One of them might say as he places himself between his companion and a particularly heavy container filled with what might as well have been bricks. "When you said 'weapons smuggling', I thought you meant guns!"

"What kind of serious terrorist uses guns anymore!?" The other would answer while she picks her way out from under a canopy of debris. "C'mon, Kid, let's get real."

Whatever retort her companion, let us call him 'Superboy', whatever retort Superboy might have had at the tip of his tongue went unsaid, as their pursuer burst through the upper deck and grabbed the demi-kryptonian in its mechanical pincers.

It was not so much an actual 'robot' as it was an 'exo-suit', or 'mobile suit'. The point being, there was a pilot inside it. A living, breathing, human being. So, the Superboy could not simply punch through it or blow it up –not unless he wanted to kill the pilot inside it, and killing was something that the Boy of Steel just would not do. So, they were running. At least, they had been running before the Superboy got pinched.

The mechanical pincer arm squeezed him tightly, pressing his arms into his rib-cage. Kon gritted his teeth against the discomfort that was quickly turning into pain and made a mental note to complement Lex on his engineering –or, maybe not.

Superboy flexed his biceps, hoping to spread the pincer enough to allow him to wriggled free. But all he succeeded in doing was cause more pain to lance down his arms. He suddenly became very aware that while he was actually rather calm, his heart was hammering against his chest as if in a panic.

"You think you could escape me, boy?" Taunted the mobile suit's pilot.

"I've still got a few tricks up my sleeve!" He growled, more out of bravado than anything else. Never let the enemy know when they've actually got you cornered. That was something he learned from the first Robin –from Nightwing. It was one of the reasons why Batman was still alive having no actual powers of his own. Most of his battles were won with psychology rather than physical violence.

The pincer claw tightened around him and Kon bit back a hiss of pain. Lois was calling his name with concern, hiding somewhere around the mobile suit's feet. The ship was listing –already half-sunk in the bay. If he could just get free, he could use the steep slant of the deck to his advantage and knock the MS off its feet. It he could just get free…

His heart was hammering so fast now he could feel it beating in his ears. What the heck was going on with him?

'Worry about that later.' Right now he needed to get free. If he could just break one of the pincers somehow…

No sooner had he thought this, however, than the one his hand was touching suddenly and inexplicably… burst –for lack of a better word. The pincer's casing and all its delicate electrical innards just erupted to the odd sound effect of FRATZ for accompaniment.

"My arm! How-?" Exclaimed the pilot.

Kon wriggled the rest of the way free of his grasp and fell to the uneven deck with a soft tump. "Ha! That's my secret!"

Lois appeared by his side. "What did you do?"

"I have no idea." He replied in all honesty.

Now free, the Superboy knocked the mobile suit's feet out from under it and the robot, pilot and all, went tumbling into the filthy waters of the bay. Kon dove in after it and, ripping off the cockpit canopy, pulled the pilot free. The police had arrived by the time they both surfaced and the Superboy handed the terrorist over to Captain Sawyer and Detective Turpin.

Lois got her story. He did his hero's duty. Sadly, Lex could not be implicated.

…

Wolf gave a loud snort of disapproval when Kon returned to the farmhouse later that evening. He was no longer dripping from his dip in the bay, but was by no means 'dry' and between the sewage run-off from the city and the oil leakage from the boats, he did not smell pretty. The kobra-venom enhanced Wolf glared at the Superboy as if reprimanding him for even daring to set a single soiled foot inside Ma Kent's house before washing it first.

"I know. I know." Groaned the demi-kryptonian. "I'll go shower."

He stripped off his clothing while he was still downstairs and threw what could be cleaned into the laundry room. What of his wardrobe that could not be saved, however, got thrown into the burn-barrel outside. Naked, he climbed the stairs to the bathroom with the better shower and set himself to the task of washing the bit of the bay that still clung to his invulnerable flesh from his person.

When that was done, Kon waited for the soiled water to disappear through the drain. He quickly rinsed the tub, then refilled it with clean warm water and settled in for a relaxing bath.

…

He sat at the head of a long table.

The table was black –made of obsidian, or black crystal.

He was dressed in white. White dress shoes, white slacks, white shirt, white vest, white blazer, white tie –bow tie.

The chairs were also black –but the cushions were red.

Along either side of the table sat people he knew. Lex was on his left, clad in purple and green, a napkin was stuck in his collar. To his right sat M'gann, her hair was long as it had been when they'd first met and she wore the trademark pink cardigan over a white blouse –he had not seen that outfit in over a year. Gazing down the table he also saw Psimon, Desmond, Queen Bee, Doctor Destiny, Granny Goodness, Amazing Grace… The table stretched on into two near infinite lines of people, some of who's faces were indistinct and generalized –he had not met them yet, he might never meet them, but they could do to him what the other's had.

Lex ran his fingers through Kr's thick ebony hair.

There was a soft pop and the clone's cranium was pulled from the rest of his skull, leaving his brain exposed.

"Would you like to carve, my dear?" Said Luthor.

"Thank you." M'gann gave that sweet smile she had perfected since before Kr ever met her.

A knife was pulled through his brain. A slice of gray matter was shaved from his right-hemisphere and placed on a plate. The plate was passed down the table. Another cut was made. Another piece sliced off. Another plate passed down the table.

It seemed this would go on forever.

"S-stop…"

No one seemed to hear him.

"Stop…" He tried again. "Please, stop."

"What was that?" Asked Lex.

"I think it tried to speak." Answered Desmond.

The whole table erupted with laughter.

"Stay out of my head." More forceful this time. "Stop!"

…

There was a crash and then the sudden feeling of falling, then with a jolt, Kon woke up. He sat on the wet and soaking bathroom floor in the wreckage of what had once been the porcelain bathtub –now shattered. He must have fallen asleep in the tub. Damn. And he'd been trying so hard not to sleep, too. He must have kicked the tub during his nightmare, which was probably how it broke.

…Except, that would explain a crack, or a fracture, or a simple break. One kick should not have shattered the ceramic tub…

Whatever. He would worry about that later. Right now, Kon had to clean up the water before it could do any permanent damage to the floor. Clark would be pissed when he came back to Earth and found his family home molding from the inside out, with floors all warped by an excess of water damage.

Kon spent the next couple of hours mopping up the floors and sweeping up bits of broken porcelain. He closed and sealed all the doors and windows and cranked up the AC to its highest setting to help dry the house out faster. By the time he was satisfied that Clark wouldn't kill him, it was almost three in the morning.

He was just getting ready to make another trip to the Fortress for another shot of stimulant –a double shot this time- when his civilian cell rang. It was a private number, which meant it was probably Tim.

"What time is it over there?" Kon asked by way of answering.

"Oh, its almost five." The Boy Wonder's voice came back matter-of-factly. "I just finished patrol and am on my way how. Anyway, I was gonna grab a few hours of sleep, then I was thinking I'd head over to the farm and show you some of that yoga I talked about before. I can borrow a spare mat from my step-mother, but you gotta get your own sweatpants."

"I have PJ-pants." Said the Superboy, not fully processing what he was hearing. "Wait a minuet, I don't think I ever agreed to this."

"It'll be fun. You'll love it." The Robin insisted. "Anyway, I gotta go, I'm almost home. I'll be over at your place around eleven –Kansas time."

He hung up.

…

Tim's seven-hour window gave Kon just enough time to hop to the Fortress very quickly for those two shots of stimulant he wanted.

This time the tremors brought him to his knees. He dropped his shot-glass with a clatter and it went rolling off into a forgotten corner of the pharmaceutical closet. His heart was hammering against his chest again, pounding so fast he could once again feel it in his ears. His chest hurt, his left arm hurt, it was difficult to breath.

Number 2 appeared by his side. Surprisingly gentle metallic hands lifted him up and began carrying him towards the Fortress' infirmary. Kon struggled to get his body back under control. It was difficult to breath, but he could still work air into his lungs. He repeated the breathing exercises Canary had taught him. With more air in his lungs, his heart rate began to slow to a more rational pace. His arm still hurt, however.

"I'm fine, Number 2." Said the Superboy as he tried to wriggle out of the robot's arms.

"Please pardon the insubordination, but my sensors indicate that you are not fine." Number 2 responded in that obnoxiously polite synthetic voice of his. "Will you please submit to an examination by Number 12? The Master's medications and formulas were designed for a pure-bred kryptonian. We have not tested the possible effects on a homo-kryptonian hybrid such as yourself."

Now the Superboy succeeded in wriggling out of the inflexible metallic arms. "I'm fine, Number 2." He said again. "Its not anything you have to worry about. Now, if you'll excuse me, someone is expecting me."

He left.

…


	4. Prana Flow

"Oh, god! You look like hell!" Those were Tim's first words upon arriving at the farm and taking one look at the Superboy. "What happened to you?"

"What?" Kon blinked at the Robin in confusion. "Nothing happened to me."

Tim scrutinized his friend's appearance. The demi-kryptonian's usually clear crystal eyes were red and blood-shot and there were dark circles under them, his complexion was paler than usual and there was just something about his general posture that screamed of tension and anxiety –more so then at breakfast the other day. What was going on? This sabbatical Dick placed him on was supposed to help the Superboy relax and recover from their last mission where they all got mind-bent, instead he seemed to be getting worse.

Under the severity of the Boy Wonder's gaze, the Boy of Steel added, "But I did help Lois and the Metro-SCU make a weapons smuggling bust last night. I fought a mobile suit. Maybe that's it."

He did not mention the odd occurrence of the suit's pincer arm rupturing for no apparent reason only milliseconds after he had wished it would break. The over-analytical boy would focus on it and not give him a moment's peace until the phenomenon was explained.

"O… kay…" Tim said slowly, not believing that explanation one bit. He stared at the Superboy a moment longer. On any other person he'd have diagnosed what he was seeing as either drug abuse or sleep depravation. But Kon was kryptonian and so Earth-born drugs didn't really work on him (at least, not the way they worked on normal humans), and he didn't need as much rest as the average Earthling, so that couldn't be it either… "Did this mobile suit happen to have kryptonite? Are you recovering from green-K poisoning? Or maybe purple-spotted kryptonite?"

He'd heard that the purple-spotted-K produced effects similar to the terran drug methamphetamine, or 'speed'.

"No." Kon assured him. "Just the normal giant robot accessories."

Tim felt himself going into 'interrogation mode'. Even without all the rigorous training Bruce had given him in how to read people, it was obvious to the young Boy Wonder that, while the Superboy might be telling him the truth, it was not the whole truth. Kon was hiding something and the Robin wanted to know what. But he had not come here to grill his friend. Chances were it was a personal issue and not anything having to do with an evil plot of Earth-shattering proportions, and so Tim made a conscious effort to pull himself out of 'interrogation mode' before another question could escape his lips. If Kon wanted to talk about it, then Tim would listen. If Kon preferred to speak to Black Canary instead, then Tim would grit his teeth and accept that the Superboy just didn't trust him all that much, after all. They had only been friends for a few weeks anyway.

"Alright then. Maybe its nothing." He conceded. "Let's get started."

When he arrived, Tim had carried two rolled-up mats under his arm and what looked suspiciously like an over-night bag over his shoulder. These he had not 'dropped' but rather 'deposited' on the porch upon seeing Kon's uncharacteristic appearance. He picked up the mats and passed one to the demi-kryptonian. "I'm guessing doing this outside would be better for you, since its such a sunny day."

"Uh, please." Kon agreed.

They found a level spot a bit of a ways away from the back porch, set almost perfectly between the house, the barn, and the near-field, and in total sunlight. The mats were unrolled side-by-side and spaced a double arm span's away from one another.

"So, this is, like, just stretching and stuff, right?" Asked the demi-kryptonian awkwardly.

"Yoga's way more than stretching." Tim replied. "Its really more like meditation. It boosts self-awareness and help's you connect your atman –that would be your individual 'self'- to the brahman –which is kinda like the whole universe."

Kon just shook his head. "Ya know, Tim, I imagined you being many things, but 'hippy' was never one of them until this moment."

"Well, you'll never reach self-awareness with that attitude." The Boy Wonder scoffed.

The Boy of Steel just rolled his eyes.

Tim decided to ignore the derisive gesture and pressed on anyway. "Okay, so I thought I'd start you off on the Surya Namaskar set. Roughly translated it means 'Sun Salutation' –kinda fitting for a kryptonian, right- and it's a set of postures that's supposed to warm and strengthen you, while aligning your entire body. I'm talking spiritual, by the way. Not physical alignment."

"I don't care." Kon told him honestly.

The younger boy sighed with exasperation. "Let's just get started." He stood with his feel parallel to each other and slightly apart, arms loosely stretched down his sides with palms facing forward. "This is called tadasana, or the 'mountain pose."

Obediently, but with reluctance, the Superboy tired to mimic Tim's stance.

"Don't be so rigid." The little Robin chided him. "This isn't the military, you're not standing at attention. Relax. Keep it loose."

The demi-kryptonian glared at him skeptically but adjusted his posture as Tim advised. "How long am I supposed to stand like this? Cause, I gotta tell ya, I don't feel like I'm gonna reach Enlightenment any time soon."

"I didn't say 'Enlightenment'. I said 'self-awareness'." Tim corrected him. "And I think I'll start you off on ten. Hold the pose for ten breaths."

Kon groaned with irritation but turned his focus inward all the same. Counting breaths wasn't all that different from the calming exercises Black Canary had insisted on teaching him back when he was still angry and frustrated over Clark's lack of attention. He had only used them a handful of times over the past five years.

"Then switch to urdhva hastasana." Tim inhaled deeply and raised his arms over his head in a wide sweep, bringing his palms together.

The demi-kryptonian mimicked the motion and held the pose for another ten breaths. This wasn't really all that bad. "Alright, what's next?"

Together they worked through the poses of Surya Namaskar with Tim offering corrections and advice where needed and Kon reluctantly coming to admit that this stretching and breathing crap wasn't really all that bad. In fact, it was rather like learning a new martial art. He had not expected that. Tim was right; he did kinda feel better after the set was over. Not exactly 'in touch with his inner light' as the Boy Wonder had advertised at breakfast the other day, but he did feel calmer, more relaxed and at ease. In fact, he felt better than he'd felt in some time –ever since returning for that last mission.

After finishing the set the first time, Tim suggested he cut his number of breaths. Shortening the length of time he held each pose from ten breaths to only five. Kon followed the suggestion and repeated the set. When that one was done, the Robin suggested he cut it down to two breaths between each pose, and finally, the last round of the set had the demi-kryptonian going from pose to pose with almost no pause in between them, almost like a modern interpretive dance, or a set of martial arts katas.

Tim made him lay in something called savasana, or 'corpse position' at the end of their practice. They both rested flat on their mats, completely relaxed and loose like fresh-dead corpses. Kon felt whatever nervousness and anxiety that was left in him drain out as he rested on his back, arms splayed to the sides, gazing up at the clear blue Kansas sky.

'More than just stretching', Tim had said.

'Okay', the demi-kryptonian agreed.

'Its really more like meditation.'

Kon laid on his back, starring up at the seemingly infinite blue sky stretched out above him like the convex shell of a robin's egg. That was an interesting comparison given his current company. The Superboy breathed deeply, taking in the fresh and clean Kansas air. He held it to the count of ten before exhaling.

His hands were splayed to the sides, palms up facing the sky, the backs of his hands resting casually on the dusty ground. The ground was still bare from the past winter, but just beneath the surface was a wide and random assortment of hayseed, jonhsongrass, ragweed and kudzu. All were weeds, not actually planted there; their seeds having been carried here by the wind last fall. They lay dormant through the winter chill and now with spring warming the soil they were growing.

It was the oddest thought ever, completely irrational, but Kon could swear that he was feeling them trying to grow. Pushing up from the soil, reaching and stretching upwards towards the light. Groping around in the dark for the life-giving warmth and energy of the sun.

'Brahman.' He thought.

…

M'gann and La'gaan were out for a romantic tryst in the sea. Mal and Nightwing were holed-up in the main computer room going over data. The girls were off doing whatever it was they did when they weren't at the Cave. Jaime's spring break from school didn't start for another week. And Conner was still on sabbatical. In short, there was no one to entertain the young Beast Boy.

'Bored.' That's what Garfield Logan was. Bored, bored, bored. Suffering from boring boredom. Bored!

So, it was a welcome distraction when the Cave's computer announced the arrival of Black Canary.

The little changeling hopped over the back of the couch to intercept her before she could disappear down the corridor to meet with Nightwing –or whatever it was she had come to do. Gar morphed into a monkey and leapt up onto her shoulders, tangling dexterous hands in her golden hair and wrapping his green fuzzy tail gently around her neck. A subtle but no less clear way of say, 'I want some attention gosh darned it!'

"Hello, Garfield." Said Canary.

"Hi. Hi." Chirped the monkey boy. "Nightwing's in the computer room with Mal."

"Is he? Oh, well that's not surprising." She smiled, trying to tilt her head in a way that would allow her to look at the little changeling without accidentally knocking him off. "I actually came here to speak to you."

"To me?" The monkey slid down her side and morphed into a puppy, his tail wagging happily, his big puppy-dog eyes gazing up at her expectantly. Then his look turned to more thoughtful and he once again morphed back into a boy. "Did I do something wrong?"

Honestly, was that how the Team viewed her? As the one saddled with the burden of reprimanding them when they did wrong? How did that impression even get started? Dinah had only ever tried to offer the Team comfort and support after emotionally taxing missions. Of course… she was also very hard on them in the training ring, but that was for their benefit in the long-run.

"No, Gar, you did nothing wrong." She assured the boy. "I just wanted to ask you a few questions about Conner and M'gann."

"Oh!" Now he perked up more than the Black Canary thought was applicable. "Are they finally getting back together? Please tell me they're getting back together! Its not that I don't like La'gaan. He tries to be nice to me and all, but he's rude, self-centered, and immature! I like Conner way better! He's so much better for my big sis. I remember this one time-"

Canary held up a hand for silence. "Maybe I should start over." She said. "No, to the best of my knowledge, Conner and M'gann are not getting back together. Something was recently hinted to me about M'gann and I'm trying to figure out what exactly happened last year when they did break-up."

"Oh. That." The Beast Boy suddenly turned sober and sullen. "No… neither of them ever told me why they broke-up. Conner said I was better off not knowing."

Canary pursed her lips. Truth be told, she had expected an answer somewhere along those lines. But that didn't mean that it still didn't disappoint her. The fact that Kon would add M'ganns name to a list of people whom had manipulated his mind was disturbing enough in and of itself, but the fact that they both seemed to be actively covering it up only added to this troubling mental picture. Of course, neither of them would really have confided in Garfield, he was to young and lacked the maturity necessary to be a confidant. But the fact that he had no idea –not even an inkling- was worry some.

He had spent so much time with the pair after his mother passed away. The Team liked to joke that he had become his surrogate parents. Garfield becoming their son rather than M'gann's 'little brother'. The fact that he knew nothing bothered her.

The fact that La'gaan also seemed to know nothing bothered her too. One would think that M'gann would confide in her current romantic partner, the boy she professed to love and trust. After all, any relationship where the partners couldn't trust each other with their secrets and insecurities, or go to one another for comfort in times of emotional distress were doomed to fail. But La'gaan was just as clueless as Dinah herself was.

Then there was M'gann herself, the girl around all of this seemed to turn. When Dinah had asked her about it directly she had been promptly stonewalled and asked to leave.

Even Kon had changed the subject when she had asked about why he would mention her when listing psychic abusers.

An idea was forming in the Black Canary's mind, a theory about what might have happened between the pair, and she did not like it.

"Um… Black Canay?" Beast Boy ventured hesitantly. "I was just wondering, do you think… is it possible that Conner and M'gann broke-up because of me? Is it my fault?"

"Gar, of course not!" She was suddenly aghast. "Why would you think that?"

"Its just… they started to have problems after my mom died, and… I was spending a lot of time with them and Conner said it would be better if I didn't know, so…"

Dinah wrapped her arms around him tightly, offering what comfort she could. "Oh, honey, no! Conner and M'gann both love you very much. You had nothing to do with their break-up. Nothing at all."

Of that fact, at least, the Black Canary could be sure.

…

"Have you ever eaten a peach the same day it was picked?"

Tim had retreated into the over-air-conditioned farmhouse to escape the creeping humidity. Kon, channeling his inner Ma Kent, likewise retired to the indoors to offer refreshments and just generally fulfill his duties as host.

"Donno." Answered the Boy Wonder truthfully. "My mom used to take me to a farmers' market that was held every week in the shopping district and the stuff there was pretty fresh. And now my step-mom is all into organic stuff and that's mostly fresh…"

Kon passed Tim a peach. "Try this."

The Robin accepted the offered fruit and took a large bite, chewed and swallowed. "It taste like a peach."

"You don't think its way better than the store-bought stuff?"

"It's a peach."

The Superboy sighed in disappointment. "I brought these from Clark's orchard in the Fortress 'cause they're, like, the best peaches I've ever tasted. I guess I've got super-sensitive kryptonian taste-buds or something."

"About that," Tim leaned against the kitchen counter and took another bite out of the peach. "You've got super-sensitive kryptonian hearing, and super-kryptonian vision –or, at least most kinds of kryptonian vision- are all of your five senses super, or just those two?"

"What do you mean?" The demi-kryptonian blinked in confusion.

"Well, you just mentioned taste, but can you smell more than a normal human can too? Or, what about touch? Is your tactile sense also super?"

"Donno." Kon had to admit. "Never thought about it."

An odd grin of excitement suddenly spread over Tim's face. "Would you mind if I designed an experiment to find out?"

The Superboy took a moment's pause. For a thirteen-year-old, the newest Boy Wonder sure did have his moments of creeyness. "I'd prefer it if you didn't." He said. "I don't much like being experimented on, because… well, you know."

"I read your file." Tim nodded, his demeanor turning sober.

They lapsed into an awkward silence after that. Tim continued to lean against the counter and munch on his peach –almost mechanically- as if at a loss as to what to say. Kon, meanwhile, busied himself making iced tea for his guest and generally fulfilling the requirements of a good host that Martha had drilled into him prior to her passing.

Finally, after the silence had dragged on long enough, Kon asked, "So… I see you brought an over-night bag."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply-" Tim explained awkwardly. "Its mostly filled with my computer supplies; lap-top, charger, portable wi-fi hot spot, signal jammer, tablet, portable scanner and detachable privacy screen. I did bring a pair of PJ-pants and clean underwear just in case. But its mostly my computer stuff."

The Superboy just gaped at him. "Signal jammer?"

"So no one can piggy-back on the wi-fi." Tim explained.

"What about the portable scanner? What could you possibly need that for here in the middle of Smallville, Kansas?"

The Boy Wonder only shrugged. "I donno. But I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it."

"My god." The demi-kryptonian just shook his head. "You're like a mini-Batman. Nightwing and the other Robin were never this bad."

Tim made a face. "I'm choosing not to take offence to that. Just so you know…"

…

As it happened, Tim did end-up spending the night.

Kon had to admit, it was nice having another person in the house. For the first time since Ma had passed away, the place was starting to feel 'alive' again. The Superboy considered having the Boy Wonder over more often.

He liked Tim's company very much.

…

The first thing Tim became aware of upon waking was the scent of bacon frying. It worked its way into his dreams, tantalizing and seducing him out of sleep's embrace and back to the waking world. The sound soon followed.

The Boy Wonder rolled out of bed. Made a quick run to the restroom to relive himself. Stepped on something sharp. "Ouh! Son of a…"

Pulled a sliver or porcelain out of his foot. He paused at that for a moment. It looked like it might have once been part of a large porcelain bowl, or maybe a tub. Come to think of it, Tim did notice a decisive lack of a bathtub in the upstairs bathroom just now. But he shrugged it off as nothing and made his way downstairs.

Kon stood in the kitchen, turning long thick strips of bacon on a cast-iron frying pan. Real country bacon. Not that low fat, low calorie, low cholesterol, organic turkey bacon Dana liked to buy. Tim felt himself begin to salivate and he swallowed quickly before he could make an ass of himself.

"Morning." Kon said without turning around.

"Morning." Tim responded.

"What was all that cussing about upstairs?"

"Oh, I just stepped on something. Do you have any anti-septic?"

"Downstairs bathroom, medicine cabinet, middle shelf."

The table was already set when Tim re-emerged from the downstairs bathroom with a band-aid covering the soft-pallet of his foot. He sat down in front of one plate of bacon and eggs. Real eggs, with the yokes and everything, not pure egg whites. Oh, country cooking… so much better than the city.

Tim broke off a piece of bacon and impaled the eggs with his fork. He placed the food in his mouth, ready to savor the flavor of the artery clogging goodness that was eggs and bacon… and then instantly regretted every happy thought he'd just had. Kon's cooking was terrible. The eggs were bland and flavorless. The bacon, over-salted and under-cooked. Tim forced himself to swallow the bite he'd already taken then chugged the glass of sweet tea that was next to his plate.

"Sorry." The Superboy flushed apologetically. "I can never seem to make it like Ma used to."

"That's… that's alright." Tim said, trying his best to put on a reassuring smile. "Everybody cooks differently. My step-mom doesn't cook anything like my real mom did. Why don't we do a bit more yoga, help us wake up a bit, and then maybe get breakfast in town? I've never actually been to Smallville and I've heard so much about it."

"Uh, sure."

…

Kon was once again led through the Surya Namaskar set. After they finished that, however, Tim began teaching him another yoga set that was supposed to help with prana flow. 'Prana', being a Sanskrit word meaning 'vital life', the idea of prana was comparable to the Mandarin idea of chi.

It was on the fourth sana of the third set that Kon once again experienced the odd sensation from yesterday. Standing in a variation of virabhadrasana, with his arms raised above his head, palms together, reaching for the sky. His feet were bare, legs spread at if lunging, the toes of his forefoot handing off the edge of his mat –touching the ground. He could once again feel the hayseed and johnsongrass pushing up from the soil, reaching and stretching upwards towards the light.

It was odd, but Kon wanted to know if he could feel more. He exhaled slowly and, still holding virabhadrasana, spread his arms in a wide ark. 'Groping around in the dark', that was what he compared it to. Like someone reaching their hands out in front of them when crossing a darkened room, Kon spread his awareness around him. It was like blowing a bubble, except instead of a stick with a loop at the end, he was using his own body, and instead of soapy water to make the bubble it was… something else. His awareness maybe? His 'sense'? Tim had been mentioning just yesterday that his other senses might also be super…

With his little bubble of senses spread out around him, rather like a field, Kon felt a bee buzz by him. It contacted the field and bobbed in the air in confusion before flying off in another direction when the demi-kryptonian could no longer detect him. Earthworms wriggled through the soil beneath him, softening the earth for the planting season –already begun.

He extended the field a bit more and –much like our proverbial person groping around in the dark- accidentally smacked his friend in the face.

"Ack! What the-!"

Kon's eyes snapped open instantly and he broke the pose, his little bubble of extra tactile perception deflating and drawing itself back into him. "Tim, sorry! Are you okay?"

The Boy Wonder sat on his mat, flat on his ass, and blinking around in confusion. "Something hit me."

The Superboy froze, an insane and yet a perfectly believable idea occurring to him. He thought about the dancing fork from the other night, and later the mobile suit's pincer-arm rupturing only seconds after he wished it would, and them just now accidentally smacking Tim without even laying a hand on him. The other stuff he couldn't really be sure of one way or another. If he had caused them, he was not aware of it, but just now… Just now, he most definitely felt a piece of himself collide with the young Robin, just not his hand or any other piece of his physical body.

"I think…" Began the demi-kryptonian slowly. "I think I hit you. Sorry."

The Boy Wonder flashed him a look like, 'C'mon, get real.' "Kon, we spaced the mat's a double arm's span apart. I know you're big, but you're arms don't reach that far."

Kon pursed his lips. He usually accepted the logic of bats. But in this one case, he felt that he was right and Tim was wrong. The question now became… should he insist that it had been him, explain to the Boy Wonder what he'd experienced and trust the youngest member of the bat-clan not to exploit this new power he seemed to be developing… Or, keep it to himself and try to explore it on his own?

He did like Tim. But, there were times when the little Robin did remind him more of the Batman than the Supeboy liked. He could see Tim going very dark given the right incentives, and if that did ever happen, having an extra power not logged in his files might be an advantage… Of course, the exact same thing could be justifiably said about him, having Luthor blood and all. Tim might hold a similar opinion of him. Given the right push, he could start calling Lex 'Pa' and become quite the evil fascist Superman.

Trust was a two-way street, as Clark so often reminded him (usually as part of a sanctimonious speech about moral high-ground). And his history with the Team only ever showed that hiding things was really never a good idea. So, it was with these thoughts in mind that Kon began.

"Tim, can we go inside and talk?"

…


	5. Homecoming

Tim examined the mangled fork Kon showed him as a visual aid to his story. To be completely honest, it was a little troubling to the young Boy Wonder. What the Superboy described seemed to be a form of psychokinesis. That in and of itself was not difficult or worrisome, the part that made the little Robin pause for pessimistic considerations was that psychokinetic abilities were not part of the kryptonian power-set. That meant that the ability had to come from his human half –from Luthor.

Looking at it from that angle, it made sense. Through out history, there have been humans documented to have various abilities that fit under the psychokinetic umbrella. Eusapia Palladino, an Italian medium from the turn of the century was said to possess the ability to move objects without touching them. Nina Kulagina was a Soviet psychic during the Cold War had even earned herself a critical mention in a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report in 1978 as a 'psychic spy'. So, it was perfectly plausible that the demi-kryptonian's new power was the burgeoning of some latent ability inherited from his human donor.

"Has Lex ever –to the best of your knowledge- exhibited any such ability?" Asked Tim.

"Not that I know of." Kon answered in all honesty. "Look, I don't know where it came from or how I got it, I'm just… I thought I should tell someone and you'd probably figure it out anyway. You bats always do."

Tim continued to scrutinize the bent and twisted fork, its wilted prongs contorted in every which way, the handle bent in half and the quark-screwed end. After a prolonged silence, the Robin asked, "When did this start?"

The Superboy opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again without saying anything. He paused and Tim could see him thinking, the wheels in his head turning. His eyes darkened noticeably when he reached a conclusion. But when he finally did answer the Boy Wonder's question, it was a disappointment to hear, "I don't know."

"Well, do you at least have an idea?" The Robin pressed. He was ninety percent sure that the demi-kryptonian did, in fact, have an idea of when he'd started exhibiting these powers. If they could identify when it started then they would be one step closer to identifying the cause –and if not the cause, then at least the catalyst that allowed for it to manifest.

"No idea." Kon assured him.

And Tim was sure he was lying. He glared at the Superboy, giving the older boy his best facsimile of Bruce's 'bat-glare' as he could. It was a technique he'd seen the Caped Crusader use on the Man of Steel more than once with an almost perfect success rate. The Big Blue Boy Scout would crack under the intensity of the Batman's gaze and spill whatever information he was originally trying to hold back –no matter how trivial. Sadly, Tim did not yet seem to be as adept at it –he had not been a Robin for very long, after all. Either that, or Kon was far more resistant to the glare then his 'big brother' –he did work under the Batman almost from the moment he was 'born'.

However, after a prolonged silence, the demi-kryptonian did say, "You don't believe me."

"I'm trained in how to read body language and micro-expressions." Began the Boy Wonder. "I can tell that you're hiding something."

Kon missed one… two… three beats before admitting, "I am hiding something." He said candidly. "But it's not just my secret. So, I'm sorry, Tim, but that's all I'm gonna tell you about that. Only know that it probably has nothing to do with my new power."

"Is that your way of telling me to drop that avenue of investigation?" Asked the little Robin, meeting the Superboy's eyes.

"This isn't an 'investigation'." The demi-kryptonian replied, offering a crystal-blue stare of his own to match the Boy Wonder's. "We're just two friends talking. Tim, please don't treat me like one of your cases."

"Sorry, Kon, I'm not trying to. But I get hit by an invisible force and then you tell me you think you're developing a new ability… I gotta ask questions."

"Alright." The Superboy begrudgingly agreed. "Just, please don't get carried away. Remember, I'm your friend, not an experiment or case-study."

"Okay, Kon, I understand. But, can we just try a couple of things?" Tim assured him. He pushed off the kitchen counter on which he'd been leaning and dashed upstairs. When he came down again, his utility belt was slung over his shoulder. The Boy Wonder withdrew from one of the pouches a robinrang. This he held flat on his palm. "Can you lift this?"

The demi-kryptonian just lifted an eyebrow instead.

"I figure its better to use my 'rangs rather than your Ma's antique silverware." He explained. "Now, come on. Do what you did outside just now, only this time hit the 'rang and not me."

Kon wasn't quite sure if the Robin had actually understood him. This felt suspiciously like an experiment just seconds after he finished explaining that he did not want to be experimented on. But, at the same time, the Superboy also understood that he would have to play around and experiment a little bit with this new power of his if he was going to learn to control it and, in the future, use it. So, he begrudgingly agreed to Tim's request.

Closing his eyes, the demi-kryptonian tried to reenter the state of mind he was in just minuets ago outside. He exhaled slowly, trying to connect with his atman, or 'inner self'. Tim did promise an increased self-awareness with their yoga training.

It had been in the middle of the prana flow exercises that it happened and Kon tried to recreate the same sensations. Outside he'd been standing in virabhadrasana, but that pose seemed a bit impractical given the enclosed kitchen area. Instead he assumed tadasana. The Superboy inhaled as slowly as he had exhaled, turning his mind inward and trying to follow the same channels through which his prana had flowed before. When he had a flimsy belief that he actually knew what he was doing, Kon exhaled again and extended his field of awareness beyond the perimeter of his physical body.

Keeping his eyes closed, Kon focused only on what he could feel through this new tactile sense. Slowly… very slowly, he did not want to accidentally smack Tim again, he continued to expand. The grouting between the floor tiles needed to be ripped out and replaced. There were thin-spots on the ceiling that would need repair before the summer was over. Finally, his field came in contact with the tips of Tim's outstretched fingers.

"That feels weird." Said the Boy Wonder.

"I'm trying to concentrate." The Superboy reprimanded.

He stopped expanding his field and instead turned his attention to shaping it. Trying to mold it around the Robin's hand and lift the robinrang up off of it. Originally, Kon imagined his field as a bubbled, now he tried to envision it as a glove. A giant invisible glove with long tendril-like fingers with which he could grip the 'rang with. There was just one problem, he couldn't seem to differentiate between what was Tim's hand and what was the metal throwing weapon. He opened his eyes in frustration, his tendrils drawing back, the field receding like low tide on a full moon.

"I can't do it." Kon groaned.

"Sure you can." Insisted the Boy Wonder. "You did it with the fork before. You just need more practice. Let's try again."

The Superboy reached out with his real hand and plucked the 'rang from the Robin's hand. "I can do this." He said. "I can pick it up and move it like normal. But with this new power… I can't tell what's you and what's the robinrang."

"Oh, well that's easy!" Tim smiled. "We just have to train your telekinetic sense to differentiate between skin and metal… and other materials."

"Do you think other telekinetics have this problem?" The demi-kryptonian asked.

"Donno. I guess that would depend on what the telekinetic ability is based on. Your TK feels kinda like a physical but invisible something. But M'gann's for example; I've never felt it when she uses her TK on me. It could be that your power is more corporeal based, while her's is metaphysical."

Kon bristled at the mention of M'gann using her powers on other members of the Team. It was a concern of his, but he did not want to worry Tim with it.

"Physical versus mental." Kon translated, running his hands absentmindedly over the 'rang. Feeling its weight and the contours of the metal. He handed the weapon back to the Boy Wonder. "Let's try again."

Tim held the robinrang in his hand.

Kon once again reached out with his bubble of extra-sensory awareness, morphing the field's shape into tendrils when he once again felt Robin's hand. He felt up the boy's arm and under his hand. The demi-kryptonian ran a tendril around the circle of metal covering his palm, then wriggled it underneath, snaking it between what he thought was skin and metal. He repeated the motion with a second tendril on the opposite side, then a third, then-

"That tickles!" Tim exclaimed and dropped his hand.

But to both their astonishment, the motion was not punctuated by the sound of the robinrang clattering to the kitchen floor.

"Kon, Kon! Open your eyes!"

The Superboy did as he was told and sure enough, he saw the circular throwing weapon hovering in empty air between them. Except the air wasn't empty. It wasn't visible to the naked eye, but the demi-kryptonian could clearly feel the tendrils of his field holding the 'rang.

"I'm doing it!" He exclaimed, suddenly grinning like a fool. "I… I've got telekinesis! …Sort of. All I had to do was touch it with my physical hands for a bit, get a feel for it."

Tim looked thoughtful. "Hm, so there's a tactile aspect to your power. Its not quite strait-up telekinesis. Its…" now it was his turn to grin like a fool. "It's TTK!"

"What's the extra T for?" Kon asked.

"Tactile telekinesis."

…

They spent the entire rest of the morning 'experimenting', or more accurately playing with Kon's new power. There's just something about boys, whether they be only children from suburban nuclear families or ageless clones made from the combination of human and alien DNA, that just makes them want to break stuff as a method of trying out new toys.

The remainder of the porch railing was ripped out with a violent CRAH-shk.

Tim whooped and clapped his hands. "That's awesome! Now do something else!"

"All I have to do is touch something and I can use my TTK to manipulate it."

"I know." Replied the Robin. "I was there when we figured that out."

The Superboy went over his mental checklist of maintenance he still needed to do on the farm. The barn was infested with termites and need to be torn down, so he focused his attention on that.

Crossing the yard, the demi-kryptonian placed a hand on the barn-door. Feeling the contours in the grain of the wood, sensing the termites wriggling and crawling around inside it. Kon walked all the way around the building, never taking his hand off the side. Feeling each individual board and panel that made-up the exterior. When he came back around to the front, the Superboy grinned a wicked grin at the Boy Wonder. "Watch this."

Kon turned his back to the Robin, faced the barn and once again assumed virabhadrasana, (which, coincidentally translated as the 'warrior pose'), bringing his arms together in front of him. He exhaled slowly, extending his tactile field, slithering his tendrils around the barn. Then, with the unnecessary exclamation of "Ha!" for accompaniment, the Superboy spread his arms dramatically and the entire front portion of the barn was ripped out.

"Whoo!" Tim clapped.

The demi-kryptonian turned back around and smiled before turning his attention back to the rest of the still standing barn and proceeded to rip-up the rest of the walls. "Ya see, my TTK is tactile based. Once I get a feel for something and can grip it and move it or break it without even touching it."

"I know." Tim said again, becoming annoyed. "I was the one who told you that."

The tin roof came crashing down to the ground, the only piece of the barn still intact. Kon walked up to it, and began running his hands over the smooth metallic surface.

"The way my TTK works-"

"Oh my god! I will robinrang you in the face!" Shouted the Boy Wonder, standing from his seat on the porch, one hand drifting threateningly into a pouch of his belt –a belt he wore over a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, it was an odd bit of fashion. "I know how your tactile telekinesis works. You can stop explaining it right now!"

Kon did stop. But not because of the Robin's not-so-empty-at-all threat, but rather, because his JLA comm buzzed.

…As did the Boy Wonder's.

In unison both boys' hands flew up to tap the comm buds in their ears.

"This is Superboy. Go ahead."

"This is Robin. Go ahead."

Both were expecting to hear the worst. An earthquake has rocked the pacific coast and a large chunk of California has fallen into the sea. Yellow Stone finally erupted; the US is fucked, come help with the evacuation. Terrorists have bombed the World Assembly; all the major world leaders are dead or in critical condition. Stephanie Meyer has published a new book. After all, what besides a tragic disaster would call them both in at the same time? Especially considering that the Superboy was supposed to be on sabbatical.

But it was none of those tragic and destructive events. No. Instead, Nightwing's voice came over the channel, clear and chipper, brimming with optimism and good humor. "Watchtower just received a transmission from the Kuiper Belt. A Green Lantern shuttle is on its way in. You guys, the Leaguers that went to Rimbor are almost home!"

There was a loud chorus off cheers from the open channel! With many exclamations of…

"Whoo-hoo!"

"Finally!"

"Batman!" –This one came from Tim.

"Wonder Woman!"

"Uncle J'onn!"

"This means you gotta clean out the Batcave, 'Wing." –That was Batgirl.

When everyone had made their celebratory noise or noises of appreciation, the Nightwing continued. "It'll still take them several hours to travel from the solar system's outer rim to here. We've placed their ETA at roughly around four AM tonight –or tomorrow morning, if you wanna be technical about it. Touch-down is planned to be on the beach outside Mt. Justice –same place they took off from. That is all."

Nightwing clicked off.

…

After Nightwing clicked off Kon informed Tim that there was some stuff he needed to do at the Fortress before Clark got home. "Feed the pets, water the plants, ya know, that kind of thing."

The Boy Wonder gave him a skeptical glance. He knew perfectly well that the Superman had a small fleet of robots to do those things for him. Kon was lying and that bothered him. But on the other hand, he considered the mess Dick had made of the Batcave in Bruce's absence and decided it was probably just something like that. Kon had made a mess of the Fortress of Solitude and needed to clean it up before the Man of Steel returned. He didn't have to lie about this, though. The little Robin was very good at keeping secrets.

They went their separate ways, with Tim going to the Cave and Kon to the Fortress.

Now that Clark was back, the demi-kryptonian wasn't sure if he would still be able to come and go from the Fortress as freely as he had been. He certainly didn't know when he would be able to come back for another dose of the stimulant without his big brother realizing what he was doing. In retrospect, Kon realized that this hadn't exactly been the most well thought out plan he'd ever had. But he would have to worry about that later.

Kon opened the pharmaceutical closet and pulled out the bottle of stimulant. He measured out another double shot, but before the glass could touch his lips, Number 2 appeared by his side.

"I really must advise against this." He said in that obnoxiously polite synthetic voice Clark programmed him with. "Continued use of a compound that was not designed for you is clearly having adverse effects on your person. I ask that you please turn the bottle and your glass over to me and report to Number 12 in the infirmary for testing and –if necessary- treatment."

The Superboy turned to glare a challenge at the android. "Make me."

"I cannot." Answered Number 2. "You know it is not in my programming to challenge you physically."

"Then quit your bitching and leave me alone."

"I cannot." Number 2 said again. "The Master left instructions to 'take care of Kon-El' in his absence. I must fulfill the command to the best of my ability within the set limits of my programming. Now, will you please hand that over to me and report to the infirmary?"

"Get bent." Kon thought about using his new-found ability on the robot, but decided against it. Number 2 might be annoying and naggy, but that wasn't really his fault –it was Clark's for programming him that way. In a way, Number 2 (and all the robot at the Fortress for that matter) reminded the young genomorph of himself. Instead of using his tactile telekinesis on the robot, Kon just shot the stimulant, as he'd come to do.

He regretted it the moment the last drop passed his throat.

The Superboy was once again seized by pain, not only in his arm and chest this time, but his entire upper body. Chest, both arms, neck and back throbbed and pulsed with pain. His heart was once again hammering against his chest as if trying to escape his ribcage. He was short of breath, air refusing to fill his lungs as he fell to his knees gasping. He still held the shot glass in his closed fist and it shattered at he hit the ground. He was lightheaded and dizzy and found himself trying to fight passing out. Then everything went dark.

…

"Sir, he cracked another containment pod."

"Incredible!"

Kon groaned as he began to slowly regain consciousness. He hated sleeping. If it wasn't nightmares about having his brain opened and passed around like slices of turkey at Thanksgiving dinner, then it was memories of Cadmus. Every time he closed his eyes, they were there.

The Superboy sighed and instead turned his thoughts outward. He was naked. Someone had stripped him of his T-shirt, pants and boots. There was a warmth all around him and he felt almost weightless, as if suspended in a liquid.

'Solar matrix.' He thought. The robots must have put him in to recover almost as soon as he passed out. 'Thank you, Number 2.'

Kon-El opened his eyes and, sure enough, he looked out on the Fortress' infirmary from inside the vaguely egg-shaped matrix chamber. The medical room was a wash of gold, his vision colored by the chamber's membrane. Kon hovered, suspended in the matrix, but it wasn't liquid he was submerged in –at least, not as contemporary terran scientists understand the state of matter called 'liquid'. It was actually a non-newtonian gas made from distilled solar particles that behaved as both a gas and as a liquid. The purpose of the matrix was to act as a way to maximize solar intake to allow for accelerated healing.

Placing his hand on the membrane, Kon tapped lightly. "Okay," He called. "I'm awake. Let me out."

Both Numbers 12 and 2 looked up from where they were studying a screen displaying the Superboy's current bio-stats.

"I cannot." Said Number 12. "We have not yet completed our evaluation of your condition. Increased blood-pressure and irregular heart-beat are attributed to the udoliv-stimulant you have been administering yourself. However, tests indicate irregularities in brain activities. Increased levels of-"

"You looked in my head!?" The demi-kryptonian's question came out as more of a snarl. "I don't like people messing with my head, Number 12! Let me out of here –right now!"

"I cannot." Repeated Number 12. "Further testing is necessary to explain these anomalies in brain-wave activity. In a way, it is fortunate you began self-medicating and went into crisis. We never would have discovered this otherwise."

Kon glared at the android through the gold-tented membrane of the solar-matrix. He did not like being held against his will. He did not like being tested or experimented on. But most of all, the Superboy hated people –be they friend or foe- playing around in his head. "Let. Me. Out. That is a direct order!"

"We cannot." Number 2 took up the conversation so that 12 could continue his work unimpeded. "The Master's commands circumseed those of Kon-El. We must 'take care of Kon-El' before we can 'let you out'."

His crystal-blue eyes narrowed dangerously at the robot. The Superboy had become increasingly annoyed with the super-android's increased hovering and mother-henning over the past few days, but this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. He was done dealing with Number 2 and the rest of the Fortress' robots. Sure, it wasn't entirely their fault, Clark programmed them, they were victims of their creator just as much as he was. But their creator wasn't here.

Kon shifted his gaze from Number 2 to the console at the base of the matrix. He scanned the controls until his eyes found the membrane release. The demi-kryptonian never spent much time in the infirmary in general, and even less time around the matrix. But Clark had taught him how it worked and how to use it –just in case the worst should happen. The Superboy had touched the controls. He tried to remember the specific feel of the membrane release control. Its shape and texture, the size of the button and how much pressure was needed to activate it.

"Anomalous activity increasing." Number 12 announced, but the demi-kryptonian wasn't listening.

Kon reached out with his TTK, extending a tendril of his field through the membrane, like a wraith through a curtain, and pressed the button.

'Matrix field dissengaed.' The Fortress' computer announced.

The golden glow faded. Gravity once again took hold of the Superboy and he drifted down to stand on his own two feet. The membrane melted around him. Kon stepped out of the matrix.

His clothing was folded neatly and placed on a recovery bed. He pulled his pants on without bothering with underwear.

"I ask that you please return to the solar-matrix." Insisted Number 2. "It will take Number 12 only a moment to get it back up and running. We have not yet completed-"

"Bite me!" Kon snarled, as he pulled his shirt over his head. He grabbed his boots, intending to put them on during the ride on Sphere back to the farm –or to the Cave. Clark was supposed to be arriving home tonight-morning. The Superboy quickly realized he had no idea how long he'd been out. He didn't know what time it was. What if he'd already missed Clark's arrival? "What time is it?"

"It is oh-three-hundred hours according to Eastern Standard Time." Answered Number 2 obediently. "Now, would you please-?"

"I have somewhere I have to be!" The Superboy stormed out.

…

Everyone who had a mentor or loved one that traveled with the party to Rimbor was already gathered by the time the Superboy arrived.

It looked like they went all out for their 'Welcome Home' party. The beach was lined with tiki torched, a narrow stretch of sand sported a snack table and a smaller drinks table sporting both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Everyone wore their masks and uniforms, but Nightwing had added a pointed party hat to his costume, as had Wonder Girl, Rocket, and M'gann. However, neither Batgirl or Robin deigned to wear one, it seemed.

M'gann was the first to notice his arrival. "Where have you been?"

Robin rushed over to him next. "We were getting worried about you when neither 'Wing or Mal could raise you on the comm. What happened?"

"I… was sun bathing and lost track of time." He lied.

Someone came up behind him and placed a paper party hat on his head, punctuating the action with a snap of the hat-string under his chin. It didn't hurt, but it did make a loud –and rather obnoxious- noise.

"Sunbathing?" Nightwing cast his eyes up at the inky dark sky. A silent, but no less clear, way of saying, 'We don't believe you. But I'm not gonna call you out on it right now. Expect to be grilled later after things have settled.'

Yes, all of that was conveyed in a single upward tilt of the chin.

Then someone shouted, "Ah! There they are!" And the Superboy was instantly forgotten.

All eyes turned to the stars and sure enough, there was a bright green light vaguely shaped like a space shuttle descending towards the beach. The Lantern shuttle seemed to descend at an agonizingly slow pace and every one standing on the beach quickly grew impatient, they were all anxious to see their loved ones again. Finally, the ship landed and dissolved, the energy drawing back like a green curtain to reveal the Rimbor party.

"Uncle J'onn!" M'gann exclaimed and rushed forward to hug her uncle.

"Wonder Woman!" Cassy did the same, only slightly more reserved than the martian girl.

"Icon!"

"Batman!"

"Batman!"

"Batman!"

The Nightwing wrapped his arms around the Dark Knight in a hug. Received only a dangerous bat-glare in return. Let go quickly. No other members of the bat-clan attempted to hug him.

Kon crossed the beach at a much more controlled pace, closing the distance between him and his genetic-parent and pseudo-big brother.

"Welcome home." He said, placing a hand on the older man's shoulder.

Clark did the same, likewise setting his hand on the young clone's shoulder. "Its good to be home."

…And that, right there, was as close to a hug as they ever would get.

They were silent for one… two… three beats. Then the Superman raised one quizzical eyebrow and asked, "Are you okay?"

Kon dropped his hand. The demi-kryptonian's happy mood deflating instantly. "I'm fine."

Clark just continued to stare at him and Kon knew he was being X-rayed. The narrowing of Clark's eyes, a slight blue glow to the irises, and most notable of all, a slight tingling on the Superboy's skin gave him confirmation that he was, indeed, being examined.

"Your heart beat's irregular." Said the Superman after a prolonged pause. "Are you worried about something?"

"No." The demi-kryptonian insisted. Then he added, "I'm just excited to have you back."

Clark paused a moment longer. Then decided to accept that flimsy excuse. He did just get home and wasn't to anxious to tackle another new drama just yet. "Me too." He said. "I can't wait to get home. I haven't had breakfast with my wife in what feels like ages."

Then the Superboy exclaimed, "Carp!" His hand flying to smack himself in the forehead in the fashion of 'Hello, Megan!' –a habit he had developed during his four-year relationship with M'gann. "I forgot to call Lois and tell her you were coming home!"

Clark only sighed in sudden exasperation. "Its alright. It won't be the first time she breaks a baseball bat on my face for sneaking in through the window."

…


	6. Asking

Once the old barn was completely torn down, Kon sold its tin roof to a pair of scrappers to recycle, then invited Tim over to a massive bon-fire of the remaining wood. They roasted hotdogs and made smores. Kon stirred the fire with his TTK. The flames were so high, the smoke so bilious that at one point the Rosses came over in their truck to see if the farmhouse had caught fire and make sure Kon was alright.

Both boys tried to hold back their amusement as Pete jumped out of the driver's seat of his truck, pulled a large hose from the flat-bed and ran to the water pump shouting that they could still stop the fire before it spread to the house. (It was in no danger of spreading at all, Kon had been very careful about that.) Oh, Pete, you are such a good man.

Lana, on the other hand, climbed out of the truck at a much calmer pace. She stood, holding baby Clark-Peter in one arm, the other hand resting on her hip and just laughed at her husband. "I think they set the fire on purpose, sweetheart." She said. Then, turning to the boys, gave Kon a knowing grin. "Sure looks like one super blaze."

Tim grabbed the Superboy's arm and hissed at a volume so low no human could hear, "Kon, she knows!"

The demi-kryptonian stifled a laugh and whispered back, "Yeah, that's Lana. She's known since, like, forever. Pete doesn't know, though, so hush."

After Tim and Kon, with the help of Lana (actually, it was mostly Lana), managed to calm the panicked Mr. Ross, they all sat down to share the hotdogs and smores. It was a great mid-spring barbecue. When it was time for them to finally go, Pete took a large helping of ash to pack into his own fields. As he was loading it into the bed of his truck, Lana pulled Kon to the side.

"Did your heat vision just kick in or something?" She asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"No." The Superboy assured her. "I just torn down the old barn and was disposing of the rotten wood."

"Well, if it wasn't an accident you need to learn to be more discreet in the future." She reprimanded him, sounding very much like a nagging mother. "I assume your friend who cleverly avoided telling us his name this whole time is one of Batman's sidekicks. I suggest you ask him for a few pointers on keeping a low profile. Remember: discretion is the better part of valor."

"Thank you, Lana." He replied. "But I know how to keep my secrets."

…

Of the Leaguers that went into space as part of the Rimbor mission, Clark was the one to draw the short straw and got tasked with Watchtower duty. One would think that Captain Atom would give them all a couple weeks reprieve to visit and catch-up with their families or civilian lives before throwing them back into League work. But no.

Watch duty was taken three at a time, and Clark's companions for this shift were the Flash and Black Canary.

Barry spent an hour filling the kryptonian in on all that had happened during his absence. Apparently, some kid claiming to be from the future had materialized in the middle of the Cave's hangar. He then proceeded to zoom to Central City, to the Flash's own home and proclaim himself to be Barry's grandson from the year 2066. That was interesting. The Flash's numerous complaints about said mysterious youngster were not.

Clark was saved from having to listen to it when Canary cut him off to ask the Superman how the Rimbor mission went.

"I'd rather not talk about it." He answered in all honesty. "But, I would kinda like to hear about what happened to Kon-El while I was gone. He was acting weird when I got back. His heart-beat was irregular and his blood-pressure was higher than it should be –almost like he's developed a nervous condition. But when I asked him about it, he just brushed me off."

Canary pursed her lips. "Talk to me after our shift is over."

…

Kon waited one full day after the barn fire finally burnt out to begin turning the ash into the near-field. He used his still developing TTK to move the now gray and dusty ash and turn it into the soil. It took the demi-kryptonian several trips to move all that had once been a sizable barn and his tactile telekinesis could only reach so far, so it took him some time before the entire field was covered with an even layer of the ash, but when it was done the earth looked rich and dark and ready to be planted.

He crouched in the center of the field, hands laid flat on the ground. Kon imagined the earth churning and rolling around him, tilling itself into long neat mounds and furrows ideal for planting. He stretched out with his TK field to make it happen but when the demi-kryptonian once again opened his eyes, rather than neat rows, he had one very neat circle of rings. Not exactly an orthodox pattern for farming, but still perfectly functional for planting. He would have a series of crop-circles in their purest form.

Aliens and cornfields. Oh, where was Wally when he needed him? There was a joke here, but Kon just didn't have the pop-culture savvy to make it.

One thing was clear, however. The Superboy needed more practice with his new power.

…

Thankfully, Watchtower shifts were not that long. Only about twelve hours.

Flash, Black Canary and Superman all zetta'd back to the Hall of Justice together. No sooner had the golden glow faded from their bodies, however, then Barry was already gone –speeding off to Central City and his nice soft bed.

Canary heaved a heavy yawn and stretched. Twelve hour shifts were murder.

Clark felt fine.

"Can we talk about Kon-El now?" He asked.

Dinah stifled another yawn but nodded. She had been asking the people closest to Conner if they knew anything about his break-up with M'gann and the Superman was one of the people on her list. She wanted to talk to him as much as he did her. Canary led him to a private lounge, one tourists couldn't access, and they sat down.

"Did Kon ever tell you why he broke-up with M'gann?" She asked outright.

"With M'gann? No. He said it was his life and it wasn't any of my business, and asked me to keep my big nose out of his personal life." Answered the Superman. It was a true comment on just how far their relationship had progressed (or not progressed, as the case may be) within the last five years. "But that was a year ago. It can't possibly be what's making him anxious now."

"I'm not sure." Dinah agreed. "Certainly its not the only thing that's placing unnecessary stress on him. Have you heard that he's been taken off the Team, yet?"

"Off the Team!" The Superman's crystal-blue eyes went wide. "What did he do!?"

Dinah shook her head, her long hair bouncing around her shoulders in golden waves. "He didn't do anything. I recommended he take a forced leave of absence, so Nightwing put him on sabbatical."

"But, why?"

"Clark, you know I can't talk about my sessions with Kon unless he gives me his permission."

"I know." Nodded the Man of Steel. "But you can't just tell me something like that without an explanation, Dinah."

With a heavy sigh, the Black Canary slumped back in her chair and said, "We missed something, or more accurately, we didn't notice something." She began. "I don't know how to explain it without giving details, but Kon never really recovered emotionally from the treatment he received at Cadmus. I'm talking specifically about the mind-control treatment. So, every time they would encounter a telepath on a mission, or Bats would put the Team through a mental exercise, or dream simulation… He'd get just a little bit worse. Not by very much, just a little bit each time. I think the last mission he went on was the proverbial straw. In a session with me, he had a bit of a mini-break-down."

Clark was silent a long moment after Dinah finished her explanation. She had told him more than she probably should have if she wanted to be able to say she'd respected doctor-patient confidentiality, but Clark was glad for it. He considered her words. An emotional break-down could certainly give-way to an anxiety disorder, that would certainly explain the erratic heart-rate he'd heard and the high blood-pressure he'd seen. But it didn't explain something else Dinah mentioned earlier in the conversation.

"What do you think M'gann has to do with any of this?"

"I'm not sure." The Black Canary confessed. "Her name came up during the session and I've been trying to find out why ever since. It seems no one knows why they broke-up."

"M'gann's a telepath…" Clark said slowly, as if thinking out loud. Then he turned to Canary. "Dinah, you don't think… Did Kon break-up with her because she used her powers on him!?"

"I don't know." She said again. "I'm trying to find out. But that's what I'm afraid of. If she did… If that's what happened, then it makes me wonder who else on the Team she might have used or be using her powers on –who she might be controlling. Maybe La'gaan, since he's her new boyfriend. Or Garfield, since they became so close after his mother passed away. They may not be aware of it at all."

"Dinah, this is serious! You have to tell someone!"

"I do intend to take action." She assured him. "But I don't want to do anything until I actually know what's going on. I don't want to start throwing out accusations and sewing distrust among the Team only to have it turn out to be nothing at all. I need to know what's going on, but… everyone keep stone-walling me."

Clark stood, his long red cape falling around his knees to punctuate the motion. "I'm going to confront Kon-El about this."

"Clark, you can't!"

"Don't worry, Dinah, I won't use any of the information you gave me. He won't know you broke your confidentiality agreement. But like you said, we need to know what's going on. If he won't tell you, maybe he'll tell me."

…

With Clark on Watchtower, it was the perfect time for Kon to make a quick trip to the Fortress for one more shot of stimulant. Not a double-shot. After the last two times, the Superboy decided to concede that increasing the dosage of a drug that was not designed for his unique dual-physiology was not a wise idea. But it didn't seem to bother him back when he was just taking one shot at a time, so the demi-kryptonian measured out a single dose of the stimulant.

His whole body shuddered violently. But there was no dizziness, no shortness of breath, no pain in his arms, neck or back. He did still have a pain in his chest, like a small throbbing and he once again felt his pulse in his ears. But these symptoms passed and when they were over Kon-El felt fine.

Then his JLA comm buzzed.

"This is Superboy. Go ahead." He answered.

"Hey, where are you?" Clark's voice came over the channel, obnoxiously chipper and friendly.

"Clark! I thought you had Watch duty."

"I did." Answered the Man of Steel. "But its over now and I thought maybe we could hang-out and catch-up. I swung by the Cave, but Beast Boy said you moved out. I'm at the farm right now, but you're not here either."

"I, uh… I had an errand I had to run." He lied. Then promised, "I'm on my way back right now."

…

Clark was sitting on the porch when Kon-El set down the Super-Cycle on the charred circle that had once been the termite infested barn. Wearing blue-jeans and a John Deer T-shirt, and flip-flop sandals. He held a glass of cold sweet tea in his hand with a swirly straw. On the wicker table next to his deck-chair was a large pitcher of the same iced tea and a second empty glass, also with a swirly straw. Well, it certainly looked like his genetic-parent wanted to 'hang-out'.

"I like what you did with the place." Said the Superman as the Superboy approached. "The roof looks good, and I like the porch. But you know, now you have to redo the other one to match, right? Just one question… What happened to my barn?"

"Termites."

Clark looked through the demi-kryptonian to the large patch of charred earth that was the late barn. "Some termites."

Kon just rolled his eyes at the poor attempt at a joke. "The termites were why I tore it down. I burned the wood after."

"Did you pack the ash into the fields?"

"Of course."

"Good man. Ma taught you right." Clark pored a generous helping of sweet tea into the empty glass. "Come. Sit. Speaking of the fields, I saw your till patterns. Very interesting. Don't see many circles 'round these parts. Its very post-modern."

Kon did not comment. He wasn't yet ready for Clark to know about his new power. Not until he got a better handle on it himself. He sat down and accepted the offered tea.

After a few moments, when it became clear that the boy wasn't going to say anything, Clark asked, "Have you planted anything yet?"

"No. I just finished tilling today."

They lapsed into an awkward silence. It was funny, Kon missed Clark so much when he was gone, but now that his genetic-parent was back the demi-kryptonian just felt awkward. They went through spells like this periodically over the past five years, where for no apparent reason, it would be difficult to hold a casual conversation. It seemed they could be the best of friends in the midst of a perilous battle for truth, justice and liberty. But on a cool spring day, sitting on the porch, sipping tea… they had no idea how to talk to one another.

After their prolonged silence dragged on long enough, Clark said, "So, I heard you got cut from the Team."

"'Cut from the Team'." Echoed the Superboy. "It's a covert ops outfit, Clark, not the varsity football team."

The Superman ignored his quip about the semantics and instead asked, "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."

"Can I at least know what's going on?" Clark pressed. "Did you and M'gann's new boyfriend have a fight?"

"No." Answered the Superboy, sounding ever so slightly exasperated. "And even if we had, I've got seniority so 'Wing would side with me over the fishstick."

"Hey now, be respectful! Ma taught you better than that." Chided the Boy Scout. Then he continued, "Well, then, why?"

Kon sipped his iced tea and heaved a heavy sigh. "Canary and Nightwing think I'm emotionally fragile and close to a break-down of some kind. Since that would make me a liability on missions, 'Wing changed my status to 'non-active'. I'm still on the Team, I'm just not working on the Team."

There was a beat of silence.

"Why are you close to a break-down?"

The demi-kryptonian slammed his tea down on the table, not hard enough to damage either the glass or the wicker, but certainly hard enough to make a loud THUNK and splatter sticky sweet tea all over his hand. "I'm not an invalid!" He snarled. "Jeez, you and Canary both. You think that just because I get a little more bothered by one specific thing than everyone else seems to, there must be something wrong with me! Look, I can take care of myself, and I don't need to be babied by all of you. I'm just fine!"

The Superman tipped his glasses down the bridge of his nose and leveled a critical stare over the frames at his clone, boring into the younger man with his unearthly blue eyes. "I can hear your heart-beat." He reminded the boy. "And I can smell your nervous sweat. Something is bothering you."

Kon bit the inside of his cheek. His irregular heartbeat was from the stimulant he'd been taking. Apparently, it was a side effect of human (or in his case, half-human) usage. But he wasn't about to tell Clark that. He wasn't really supposed to go into the pharmaceutical closet at the Fortress when the Superman wasn't there. But he had to tell his genetic parent something, otherwise the overly protective Boy Scout would never drop the issue and leave him alone.

"Nightwing pulled me after my last mission." He said.

"What happened on the mission?" Clark asked.

"Nothing." Kon was quick to reply.

The Man of Steel just leveled a second gaze at the boy. "Kon-El, you got pulled from active duty. What happened?"

The Superboy groaned. Avoided eye-contact. Sighed. "Me, La'gaan and Robin got trapped in another dream-sim. That's it. That's all that happened. No big deal."

Clark was silent. Dinah said that the last mission he went on was a final straw of an issue that had been building slowly over the past five years. Every time he encountered a telepath, underwent a mental exercise, mind-control, artificially induced mental states, dream simulations… It all built up. The last mission, when viewed as an isolated incident might have been nothing, but on top of everything else… yes, it might have made him snap in some way. That would certainly justify pulling him off duty and it could also explain his current anxiety symptoms.

"Did they have M'gann take a look at you –all of you- after you got back from the mission?"

"No!" Kon more snarled than spoke.

"Why not? If I came back from a mission where I was placed in an artificial dream-world that altered my perceptions or ideas about reality, Bats would ask J'onn to look me over just to make sure there wasn't any lasting influence."

"I don't like people poking around in my head, Clark!" Snapped the demi-kryptonian. "You know that. You've always known that. I've never liked people in my head!"

"But M'gann's your friend. I know you two aren't together anymore, but I'm sure you could trust her to look you over without worry." A strategic pause. "Unless… Kon-El, does M'gann being a telepath have anything to do with why you broke-up?"

The Superboy bolted to his feet. "This is a set-up." He said. "I should have seen it. The porch, the tea… Who put you up to this? Was it Canary?"

"A set-up?" Clark blinked at him, confused by his extreme reaction and concerned over his apparent paranoia. "Kon-El, you sound like a bat. What's happened in the months I've been gone?"

"Nothing!" The demi-kryptonian snapped. "Nothing any different than what's been happening since the night I left Cadmus."

"Sit back down, little brother." Said the older man in that obnoxiously calming voice he usually reserved for hysterical rescue victims.

Kon remained standing. He continued to glare at the Man of Steel.

"Fine. Don't sit, just listen." Clark threw his arms up in exasperation. "Okay, so you say nothing happened that was any different than anything else that's been happening since your liberation. That's fair, but that doesn't mean its right. We live odd lives, Kon-El. We do an odd job, and if we do it long enough it gets to us. It builds up over time. You say your last mission involved mental tampering. Well, that's something you've been dealing with since before you were 'born'. It stands to reason that-"

"I don't have to listen to this." The Superboy turned to leave.

Clark stood and placed a single restraining hand on the boy's shoulder. "No. Listen. You went through a traumatic experience at a young age. It happens to lots of people. That trauma makes you more sensitive to similar treatments later in life. Granted, most people don't go through things that are as bizarre as what happened to you, but that doesn't make it any less serious. What you don't seem to get is that you don't have to suffer alone. For as long as I've known you, you've always internalized your problems. You don't talk to people, you just bottle it up. But when you do that, it just puts extra strain on you and makes it all the worse."

"I talk to Canary." Kon growled.

"Rarely. You only ever ask for help after you're way, way past the point of needing it."

The demi-kryptonian took a breath, then another one –deeper. His chest was beginning to hurt again. He hated arguing with Clark. Kon ran through the breathing exercises Canary taught him, then some of the yoga ones he'd recently learned from Tim. "Clark," he began when he was sure he had control over himself again, "I'm fine. I've been living on my own for the past week, I've been keeping busy, repairing the house, maintaining the property; I've been hanging out with the newest Robin –he knows your identity, by the way- I'm not anyone you need to 'save'."

"Yeah, everyone in the bat-clan does." Clark waved a hand dismissively. "Look, Kon-El, I'm not trying to 'save you' as you say. Its just that you seem a bit off –I mean, more off than usual and I worry."

"Oh, you worry?" The clone crossed his arm over his chest. He was getting fed-up with this conversation and ready to go for blood. "Okay then, come back in another six months. Then you can do something about it. Until then… 'we'll figure something out. I mean, the League will."

The Superman winced. Kon would never let him forget those first six months of his life, from July fourth to January first, five years ago, Clark had done everything in his power to avoid the Superboy and generally try to have nothing to do with him. They had since reconciled. Clark accepted the demi-kryptonian as family and adopted him into the House of El as a younger brother. But, in much the same way that Lois would never let him forget that he out-scooped her for the first Superman story ever, so too would Kon-El never let him forget those first six months of neglect.

"Don't be like that." Whispered the Superman. "You know how much I regret that."

"Oh, how much you regret-"

Clark's civilian phone began to ring. It was Lois' ringtone.

"Go ahead and answer that." Muttered the Superboy.

"It can go to voicemail."

"She'll be mad."

"Won't be the first time."

The Ducktales theme ended. Then began again, only coming from Kon's pocket this time.

The Superboy thrust his hand into his pocket and withdrew his phone. "What!?"

The first thing Kon heard over the line was not a snarky come-back from Lois Lane-Kent, intrepid reporter working for the Daily Planet and resident authority on all things Superman. Instead, the first sound to grace his ears upon answering was that of gunfire and cursing.

Then, "Camera on the action, Jimmy!"

"Lois?" Ventured the Superboy, suddenly unsure. "Everything okay…?"

"Kid!" She breathed into the phone, sounding exasperated but energetic. It was her 'hot story' voice, and by the commotion in the background, the story was indeed hot. "Clark's not answering his phone. Can you come to Metropolis for a bit?"

He didn't wait for details, just promised, "We'll be right there!" And flicked the END button, jamming the phone back in his pocket. Turning back to Clark he said, "Just got home and already there's trouble in your town."

Clark sighed. "Wanna come with?"

"Yes." The boy answered, the argument they were having only a moment ago already forgotten.

…

The problem with crooks is that they tend to be petty. Even serious ones that are into big-crime. So, when an intrepid reporter (with the help of a super-powered meta-teen) starts poking her nose around your weapons smuggling racket and ends-up busting a deal, apprehending one of his men and causing the merchandise to fall into the hands of the SCU… Well, that's the sort of thing that tends to rub these guys the wrong way. So, it really should not have come as any sort of surprise when four of the same model mobile-suits that Superboy fought at the docks a few night ago showed up at the Daily Planet looking for Lois Lane.

Perhaps it wasn't the smartest move to make in Superman's town. But since when have criminals been smart? Superstitious and cowardly, yes. Smart, not often.

Fortunately (and perhaps also sadly), the Daily Planet staff was used to these kinds of interruptions in their standard workdays. The building and everything in it was ensured. The people learned never to keep anything of great personal value in their desks. And they had perfected the single most efficient evacuation and escape procedure known to mankind. The building was completely empty by the time Superman, carrying Superboy in his arms, appeared on the scene.

Clark sighed. "What did she do this time?"

Kon recognized the mobile suits. "Actually, it was both of us. I helped her on a weapons story and ended-up handing one of those things and its pilot over to the SCU."

"Great. Then you can tell me how to disable them and end this quickly."

"They've got living pilots in them and the cockpit's in the chest-plate. The hatch pulls off easily enough. But watch out for the pincer arm. Its pretty durable with enough hydraulic power behind it to hold me."

"Good to know." Nodded the Man of Steel. "You wanna take the two at street-level, I'll take the two in the air."

"That goes without saying."

"Last one to finish buys lunch." And on that note, Clark let go of the demi-kryptonian whom promptly plummeted toward the cracked and torn street.

The thing with smugglers was that, while they might be fantastically organized with their shipping, delivery and clientele. But when it came to maters that were more martial in nature, such as attack strategy and organization… well, lets just say there's a reason they're smugglers and not mercenaries.

The Superboy landed with a muted THUMP right in between the two ground infantry mobile suits. He kicked up a manhole cover and threw it –like a frisbee- at the nearest of the two robots. It struck the mobile suit in the back with a loud, resounding metallic CLANG!, and the lumbering machine turned to face its attacker.

"License and registration, please?" Kon grinned at the chest-plat, knowing he was looking strait at the pilot even if he couldn't see him.

The mobiles suit's response was to swing its pincer arm in a wide arch, knocking over a bus-stop canopy and sending a variety of other debris in every which direction.

The Superboy dodged most of it with ease, and what he didn't dodge bounced harmlessly off his invulnerable skin. Still smiling, he continued, "I'm gonna have to ask you to step out of the vehicle."

Naturally the MS-pilot was non-compliant with this simple and common request. Instead, he laid down machine-gun fire forcing the Superboy to throw himself between the on-coming bullets and a group of innocent bystanders cowering in the makeshift shelter of a ring of debris. This gave the second the perfect opportunity to flank the demi-kryptonian and snatch him up in what would have been a death-grip were it not for his invulnerability.

"Ugh! Seriously…?" Kon groaned as the wing was squeezed out of him.

He felt a short stab of panic –for no explainable reason- before taking a deep breath and channeling his TTK to force the pincers open. The Superboy was dropped at the mobile suit's feet and he kicked out, knocking one of the massive robotic legs out from under it, causing the machine to teeter off balance and fall over. Kon jumped on its chest and ripped the cockpit panel off. But before he could rip the safety harness and pull the pilot out, he was hit in the back by the second MS.

It impacted the back of his head with enough force to have liquefied a normal person's skull. The Superboy staggered for a moment only, but it was long enough for the mobile suit to get in a second hit that had the demi-kryptonian on the ground. The first MS climbed back to its feet, sans its cockpit panel, the pilot exposed. It stepped on Kon's legs, pinning him to the ground.

"You're that meta-punk who pinched our guy at the docs." Said the exposed pilot.

Kon groaned and tried to move his legs and kick the mobile suit off him. He felt his heart-rate begin to increase again, his chest feeling tight, and he did not like it. The Superboy took another deep breath, trying to get a handle on his symptoms. He stretched out with his TTK and flipped the giant robot off him. Once again, jumping on it and successfully ripped the crash-impact harness and pulled the pilot out. He looked around for Detective Turpin or Captain Sawyer, but sadly, only SCU grunt officers were present –helping with evacuation and crowd control.

The demi-kryptonian hopped over to the nearest group of SCU and passed the pilot off to them. One down. One to go.

The second mobile suit smacked him again, sending the Superboy flying into a pile of cracked concrete and mangled steel thrown up by the battle. A heavy steel girder –some dislodged piece of the Planet building- fell over the boy's ribcage, for the second time this fight he had the wind knocked out of him. His heart was hammering around his ribs again and Kon could feel it in his ears. His breathing was coming up short and he was starting to feel dizzy. This wasn't from the MS or the battle; it had to be from the stimulant he'd taken earlier today.

The Superboy channeled his TTK like a battering ram to push the girder off his chest. He climbed to his feet and glared up at the mobile suit. This shouldn't be this hard. He had beaten the first one at the docs the other night so easily.

Chest hurting, short of breath and light headed, Kon tried to take one more deep breath and force some air into his lungs, but it just wouldn't go. The giant robot loomed over him menacingly and the Superboy braced himself for the blow he knew was about to strike.

The blow didn't fall.

Instead, a streak of red and blue flashed through his field of vision and in the blink of an eye, the mobile suit was down, disabled, and the pilot in SCU custody. Then, in another moment, Clark was standing in front of the Superboy, one strong hand under his arm-pit, giving support. "You okay?" He asked. "Your pulse…"

Kon tried to speak but there just wasn't enough air in his lungs. He was dizzy and light-headed. The pain in his chest spread to arms and neck. The demi-kryptonian groped at the Superman's uniform as his mind jumped to a conversation they'd been having not even an hour ago.

'You only ever ask for help after you're way, way past the point of needing it.'

"Cla…" He gasped, his other hand clutching at the S-shield on his own uniform. Maybe he should have listened to the robots at the Fortress. As Number 2 had said, Clark's medications were not designed for him; they didn't know how it would effect his dual bio-chemistry. Well, it looked like they were finding out. He should have let Number 12 finish his check-up. "Clark… help…"

And then, he passed out.

…


	7. Admission

Clark studied the readouts in front of him, eyes flicking from the data on the consol's screen to the unconscious boy bobbing slightly within the solar-matrix. The Fortress of Solitude was really the only place on Earth equipped to offer any version of real medical aid to a kryptonian. The infirmaries on Watchtower and in the Cave tried, and Clark even supplied some equipment to them for that specific purpose. But the Fortress would always be the better option. So it was the Fortress that the Superman rushed his young clone to when the boy went into crisis shortly after a battle that –on any other day- should have been a nothing skirmish.

It was a good thing he had. Number 2 seemed to already know exactly what the problem was the moment Kal-El arrived with the unconscious Kon-El. The android flew to the infirmary. He and Number 12 already had the matrix up and running and just waiting for the boy by the time the Superman drifted through the door. Once the demi-kryptonian was safely marinating within the slightly egg-shaped golden glow, that was when Clark began demanding explanations.

"Physical symptoms are attributed to the udoliv-stimulant." Explained Number 12. "Kon-El began taking it shortly after the completion of his last mission prior to his leave of absence from the Team."

Clark glared at the robot. "That compound wasn't designed for him. Why did you let him to take it?"

"Kon-El was warned numerous times that taking the udoliv compound might have adverse effects on his hybrid-physiology." Answered Number 2. "He insisted on taking the compound anyway. Verbal warnings were all that could be done within the set parameters of our programming."

Clark sighed. That was his fault. He's had to many robots turn rouge in the past because he gave them to much free will. Limiting them like they were now ensured that the Earth wasn't terrorized by mad Super-bots, but it also meant that their responses to situations such as these would be limited to impotent nagging. There was no such thing as a perfect artificial intelligence. But that was a problem for another day. Right now he needed to deal with the issue of this little brother. "But, why was he taking it in the first place?"

"He would not say." Both robots choired in mathematically perfect unison.

The Superman groaned. "He seems to do that a lot." Clark jabbed a finger at the matrix's readouts again, specifically indicating the anomalies not explained by the boy's drug use. The unusual alterations in his brain-wave patterns. "What about these?" He asked. "The udoliv couldn't have caused this."

"Causes for irregular neural activity have not yet been ascertained." Number 12 informed him.

Clark looked back to his clone bobbing in the solar-soup of the matrix. He was no Batman, but if he had to hazard a guess, the Man of Steel would attribute Kon-El's altered brain-waves to the accumulated physic abuse he's underwent over the past five years. He had no concrete evidence of this, just a gut feeling, and he was by no means a great detective, he could figure simple things out well enough, but one of the bat-clan would be better. Speaking of the bat-clan… how had Dick not noticed Kon-El's drug usage this whole time? He was leader of the Team, after all, and Kon-El was a squad leader.

Canary knew something was troubling the boy. That was why she had recommended he be placed on sabbatical. Come to think of it, why was he taking a stimulant when he was supposed to be on vacation? Clark would understand Kon-El using the udoliv compound while he was still on active duty, but during a leave of absence… there should have been no reason for it.

The Superman frowned. "Translate all the data on Kon-El's symptoms and condition into English and print out hard copies, please." He commanded the robots. "Bring them to the scenic lounge when you're done. I have a call to make."

…

Gamma Squad was not always comprised of Blue Beetle, Lagoon Boy and Robin. But they were the three newest members of the Team and so the rosters just sort of fell into place that way. Since they worked together most often, the three decided it would be best to train together in their off-hours as well. This is exactly what they were doing at the Cave when Black Canary zetta'd in.

She waited for the boys to finish the maneuver they were working on before interrupting. Offering some constructive feedback (she couldn't help it, since combat training was her job), before she asked to see Robin alone. Dinah waited for the obligatory question of, 'Did I do something wrong?' But the Boy Wonder only nodded.

When they got to the counseling lounge, the Robin turned around and asked flat-out, "Is this about Superboy?"

The Black Canary did a double take and blinked at the boy.

Robin only shrugged. "The guys talk." He explained. "Lagoon Boy told Beetle and I that you were asking around about his break-up with M'gann. If you're wondering whether or not he confided in me about it since we became friends, I can tell you: He did not."

Dinah sputtered for a moment. In retrospect, the Boy Wonder was a detective so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to her that he already knew what she wanted to ask. But she hadn't expected him to be so forward and blunt about it.

"Was there anything else you wanted?" He asked.

"I guess not." She had to admit. "Was there anything you wanted to discuss? Since we're here."

"No, I'm good." Robin shrugged.

"Alright then."

"Okay. I'm gonna go back to training with Beetle and Lagoon, now." The Boy Wonder brushed past her and back out of the counseling lounge.

The Black Canary heaved a sigh as she followed him out. As with speaking with M'gann, La'gaan and Garfield, this had been an exercise in futility. It seemed like she finally exhausted her short list of people who were close enough to either Conner or M'gann for him to have confided in. Well, not everyone. Dinah made an appointment to speak with J'onn tomorrow. But on Conner's side, at least, it seems like all her options were exhausted.

Nightwing walked up to her almost as soon as she stepped out of the lounge. "Hey, Mal's got a call for us waiting in the private briefing room."

"On my way." Canary nodded.

"Mission?" Robin asked.

The Nightwing shook his head. "No, just Superman calling about something. Go back to training with the others."

The three birds parted ways in the corridor, with Nightwing and Canary heading to the private briefing room and Robin heading towards the hangar in the opposite direction. He did not return to his Teammates, however. Instead, he ducked into the first empty room with an available terminal and hooked in his computer-glove. The holo-screen appeared above his wrist, ready to hack the comm channel.

A bust of Superman was already projected on the briefing room's main screen when Nightwing and Black Canary entered. Mal gave the birds a nod before leaving them to their conversation. Once the door was firmly shut behind him, Nightwing offered an easy smile.

"Hey, Supes, what's the problem?"

The holographic image of the Man of Steel glared back at them. "Nightwing, Canary," he began, voice vibrating with control, "I'm going to ask you both one question: Why has Superboy been taking stimulants when he's supposed to have been taken off of active duty?"

"What!?" Dinah exclaimed.

"Wait, what?" Dick echoed.

There was a beat of silence in which the three did nothing more than stare at one another.

Then, Clark said, "You two had no idea." He let out an exasperated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to stave off an on-coming stress headache. "Honestly, I don't know what I'm gonna do about that boy." He fixed his crystal-blue stare on Dick. "I don't suppose you could maybe hazard a guess as to why he might take drugs?"

"I…" The Nightwing sputtered. He was a detective for cripes sake, and yet he didn't have the slightest inkling. "Do… do drugs even work on him? I mean, since he's kryptonian and all…"

"Half-kryptonian." Clark reminded him. "Half-human. The compound he's been taking is something I designed for myself, it's meant to be used on a full-blood kryptonian. It wasn't meant for someone with his unique bio-chemistry."

There was another beat of silence.

Then, Canary asked, "Clark, where is he right now?"

"I put him in the solar-matrix to recover."

"So, he's at your Fortress." She nodded. "May I come over and speak with him?"

The Superman nodded. "I have some data I want you and Nightwing both to look over and there's more I want to discuss. I'll send Numbers 5 and 7 to pick up you at the Cave. Dress warmly. The high today was nineteen degrees."

The Superman clicked off. The screen went dark.

The Nightwing heaved a sigh. "I swear, there's always something with that guy… from the first moment we rescued him."

Canary deigned not to reply to his comment. While she begrudgingly had to admit that his statement was true, there did always seem to be one melodramatic catastrophe or another centering around the Superboy, that did not meant that they should treat this latest of issues lightly. Drug use was a serious issue, one that had serious consequences and needed of be handled with care. She opened the door to exit the briefing room…

…and nearly tripped over the Boy Wonder.

"Robin!" She exclaimed, catching herself on the doorframe before she could fall. "What are you-?"

"I'm coming too!" He announced. "Superboy's my friend and I wanna make sure he's okay."

Nightwing just hid a proud smile behind his gloved hand. He should have known Tim would hack the comm channels. He was a chip off the old Robin block. Dick made a mental note to give him a mission where he could hack some motion sensors –purely for nostalgia's sake.

…

Clad in well-insulated uniforms in shades of white, gray, and blue, the trio was admitted to the Fortress and lead through the corridors to a scenic lounge. A wide round coffee table sat in the center of the room, a semi-circle of very comfy looking armchairs around it, each positioned so that the person whom sat in it could both access the table as well as easily gaze out the wide window that made-up the majority of one wall. It looked out over a barren landscape of white and blue –a land in eternal winter.

But it was not the view that their eyes focused on when they were shown into he room. Instead, all three focused their attention on the red and blue figure already seated and poring over stacks of papers; what looked like medical charts, wave graphs, and affidavits. The Superman looked up when they entered, it looked like he was ready to sit down to a serious meeting, but upon seeing the third member of their party the Man of Steel paused.

"Robin? What are you doing here?"

"Where's Superboy?" Demanded the Boy Wonder.

A full beat passed before the Superman answered. He seemed to be considering reprimanding Canary and Nightwing for bringing him when the little bird had nothing to do with this issue, or thanking them for dragging him along since it might be nice for Kon to see a friendly face when he woke-up. Clark seemed to finally settle somewhere between the two options and said, "Number 5 will show you to the infirmary. I suppose it's pointless to ask you not to touch anything? Just don't play with any important looking machinery."

"Robins don't 'play', we investigate." The boy grumbled.

"Well, don't investigate anything to the point that it breaks -or blows-up."

Number 5 reappeared by his side and the Boy Wonder followed the super-robot down the corridor and around a corner. Clark then turned his attention back to Nightwing and Black Canary –the Team's leader and the Team's councilor. "You two come in and sit down."

If either of them noticed how brusque the Man of Steel was with them, they did not show it. They all sat down and Clark passed each of them their own copy of the papers he was studying when they walked in.

"Since neither of you had any idea about Kon-El's drug usage, I'm gonna tell you what I know. According to Number 2, Kon-El began using shortly after returning from his last mission. The compound he was taking is an energy drink I designed for myself. For me, it's equivalent to drinking a Red Bull. But for someone who's half-human, it has a very different, more adverse affect. What you're holding in your hands are the results of a thorough and complete examination and diagnosis of his symptoms."

In unison, both Black Canary and Nightwing glanced down at their papers.

"Anxiety, sweating, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, upper body pains, chest pains…" Canary read. "These are…"

"These are symptoms of a heart attack!" Nightwing finished for her. "Do… do kryptonians get heart attacks?"

"Apparently, half-kryptonians do." Answered the Superman. "I've cut him off from his supply. I've reorganized my medicine cabinet to make it harder for him to find and added new security protocols to the door lock. With enough sunlight, rest and time, I'm confident his heart-condition will recover. What I want your opinions on are these charts here."

From his own copy of documents Clark pulled out a series of wave-charts and number stats to show them the ones he meant. Canary and 'Wing flipped through their own packets until they found the ones he'd indicated.

"These results can't be explained by the stimulant." Explained the Superman. "I've had Number 12 run every conceivable scenario and none of them could show a correlation between the drug and this odd brainwave activity. Do either of you have any idea what could have caused this?" He paused. When neither of them said anything, he continued, "Canary, earlier you broached the idea of a possible build-up of mental stress in Kon-El from all the psychic tampering he's gone through over the past five years. Could this be a result of that?"

Dinah pursed her lips in thought.

Outside the wide window it began to snow lightly.

"I don't know." She said at length, running a hand through her thick golden hair. "Maybe… I honestly don't know enough about neural science and telepathy… or whatever."

"Wait, what?" Behind the whited-out lenses o his domino mask Nightwing blinked. "What psychic tampering? Nothing's happened to him since we rescued him from Cadmus. Hasn't it…?"

All three of them were silent for one… two… three beats.

Then, Nightwing began slowly, as if talking through his mental processes; "Supey's treatment at Cadmus over-sensitized him to telepathic influence." He began. "So… so, every time something happened that was the slightest bit similar to the G-gnome's control…"

Superman and Canary nodded.

"Gold star for the detective." Said Clark.

"Since I recommended you put Conner on sabbatical I've been going over his old mission logs for the past five years –among other things." Canary explained. "Since leaving Cadmus, he has had his memory erased, underwent false reality scenarios, artificially induced dreams, mind-control through key-words, mind-control by Queen Bee, synthetic hallucinations… I could go on. Each time it happed I'm sure he got a little worse, not enough for us to notice, but just enough for the strain keep building."

"That's why you recommended I pull him from active duty." Nightwing ruffled a hand through his hair. "I'm not a neural scientist either, but I guess something like that could explain these brainwaves. Except…"

"Except?" Clark and Canary prompted.

"Well, its just… Okay, you guys know how Batman likes to collect and hoard information, right?" Yes, everyone who had ever worked with the Dark Knight knew that about him (among other eccentricities). "Well, Bats has got this archive of random info on the Justice League, Team and other heroes not affiliated with anyone. In this archive he's also got all this research of different powers and stuff, how they affect people and what not. Well, these readings look kinda like people with psychokinetic abilities."

"What?" Clark blinked. "Psychokinesis is not a kryptonian ability."

"But Conner's half-human." Canary reminded him.

"And humans have been known to exhibit psychokinetic abilities." Nightwing finished. "Supey could be developing a new power as a side-effect of all the mental tampering he's gone through."

"I have a question." Dinah raised her hand as if in school. "We've all figured out a lot here that we didn't know before, but I just found out Conner was taking drugs a few hours ago and no one has given a reason why. Why has Superboy been taking drugs since his last mission? You say it's a stimulant, but he wouldn't need any extra energy since he was put on sabbatical, and the way you described it, it doesn't sound recreational. So… why?"

"I don't know." Clark had to confess. "That's a question we'll be able to ask him when he wakes up."

…

Clark was right, Tim decided, it was pointless to ask him not to touch anything. The young Robin's eyes darted every which way, determined to take in and study everything he could in the time he was here. It was unfortunate that his first visit to the Fortress of Solitude was under such unfortunate circumstances and he worried after Kon. But at the same time, both Bruce and Dick had been admitted to the Superman's sanctuary before, it was finally his turn.

Everything was a wash of white and blue, white stone and crystal. At first, Tim thought everything was carved of solid ice, but it was to warm within the Fortress for that to be possible. Taking a glove off, the Boy Wonder ran the back of his hand over a wall as he walked behind Number 5. It was not cold; it was room temperature –neutral. It wasn't ice; it was crystal. But not any terrestrial crystal Tim knew about. It wasn't a mineral found on Earth. The walls of the Fortress of Solitude were erected from kryptonian crystal. A little piece of Krypton on Earth.

But the infirmary was even more fascinating!

The door was a solid metal panel set right into the white crystal of the wall. It slid to the side to reveal a large, wide, circular room with a vaulted ceiling paneled in what looked like inverted solar-mirrors. Against the sidewalls were placed several alien-tech consoles, the functions and purposes of which, Tim could only guess at. Most of the center of the room was taken up by a single machine.

At first Tim did not notice Number 12 or the consol he was studying. The Boy Wonder's attention was immediately captured, instead, by the vaguely egg-shaped glow of golden light in the center of the room. It was as if light had been bent into the center of the room and everything else was designed around it, a mini-solar system orbiting an artificial sun. As he stared at the egg of warm light, the Robin realized that there was something inside it, a humanoid figure. Coming more into the room, drawing closer to the thing, he realized it was Kon. Kon floated naked, suspended in a field of what looked like liquid light.

Fascinated, Tim stretched a hand out. He wanted to touch that field of light. Liquid light… bent light… It shouldn't be physically possible, at least, not how he understood physics. Tim stretched his arm, reaching for the warm light. It felt so warm, even through the thick insulation of his glove.

"Please do not touch that." Said the obnoxiously polite voice of the robot working at the solar-field's consol. The shield on his chest sported the numeral 12.

"Sorry." Tim drew his hand back. "Will it mess him up?"

"Unlikely." Replied Number 12. "But you would receive a fourth degree burn."

"Oh." And Tim quickly realized that it should not have felt as warm as it did through the insulation in his gloves.

"Your cheeks are already beginning to turn pink. I'd advice stepping back before you burn."

"Oh, okay." The Boy Wonder stepped back. A sunburn from the light field, interesting. It really was like a mini-sun in the center of the room. He logged that information in the back of his memory. It might become useful one day. Like Bruce, Tim believed one could never know to much. An abundance of knowledge was the bat-clan's true super-power.

Within the field of light, Kon stirred. His eyes opening slowly. He drifted forward a bit, placing his hands on a membrane or sorts, a detail Tim did not notice until the Superboy placed his hand on it. "Did I just hear –Tim!? What are you doing here?"

"Oh, ya know… I was in the neighborhood, investigating a hit-and-run case involving a reindeer. Why do you think I'm here!?" Behind the whited-out slits of his of his domino mask, Tim's eyes narrowed at his friend. "What the hell, Kon!"

"What do you mean 'what the hell'?" Kon blinked, bobbing up and down in his egg-shaped field of light. "What did I do?"

"Clark called the Cave today." Tim explained. "He said you've been self-medicating. God! Do you have any idea how pissed I am? I mean, I hang out with you all the freaking time. I should have seen it! Heck I did see it, I just assumed I was wrong because drugs don't work on kryptonians, kryptonians don't need sleep. Some great detective I am… can't even tell when my friend is using."

Kon skipped a beat before asking, "I'm confused. Are you mad at me or yourself?"

"You!" Snapped the Boy Wonder. "I'm angry with you! What the hell, Kon? I spent the whole flight here thinking about it, but I can't for the life of me figure out a reason why you would start using."

"That's something we'd like to know, too."

Both boys turned to watch Nightwing, Black Canary and Superman enter the room.

Kon's crystal eyes glared through the glowing gold membrane of the solar-matrix. Crossing his arms over his chest, he growled, "Go ahead and invite the whole Team over, why don't you."

"Kon-El, this is serious." Clark said by way of reprimand. "We're all worried about you."

The demi-kryptonian shifted his position in the matrix-field so that he was completely facing the three adults, his glare fix squarely at the Superman. Dinah blushed politely at his nudity and averted her eyes.

"Thank you, but you don't have to worry about me. I can take care of myself!"

"Obviously, not!" Tim snapped, drawing the Superboy's attention back to him. He drew a step or two closer to the matrix, offering Kon a glare of his own. That bat-glare of his was getting better. Not quite up to the Dark Knight's level, but he was still only thirteen, after all. "Pumping yourself full of poison is not 'taking care' of yourself."

"And…" Clark chimed in and took over. "Since you seem incapable of doing it yourself, it looks like we have to step in and take care of you instead. I've started by cutting you off from your supply of udoliv."

"You can't do that!" Kon all but snarled, pressing his hands so hard against the membrane of the matrix that it formed between his fingers like a transparent glowing gold glove. "I need it!"

Next to Clark, Canary whispered, "Is this thing habit-forming?"

"No." Replied the Man of Steel. "Or, at least, it shouldn't be." Then, once again speaking to the Superboy, he asked, "Why do you need it, Kon-El? Why'd you start taking it in the first place?"

Kon pulled back from the membrane and averted his eyes. "Its not something you would understand."

"Try us." Nightwing suggested. "C'mon, Supey, with all the stuff we've seen and done together… I thought we trusted each other."

"People you trust can still hurt you." Muttered the demi-kryptonian in a voice so low none but the Superman heard it.

Clark's eyes narrowed at the odd comment and he once again remembered his conversation with Dinah and her theories that M'gann might have used her powers on Kon. Given his history with Cadmus and mental tampering in general, for her to have done that would be the single most ultimate betrayal she could have possibly committed against him, and it would have been made all the worse by how deeply he cared for and trusted her. In fact, it was comparable to a person date-raping their partner whom had once been the victim of brutal assault. Clark hoped to whatever omnipotent powers that would listen that, that wasn't what happened between them. Please, Rao (or whoever), please let it just have been some silly teenage melodrama and nothing more.

"We know." Nightwing was saying. "Believe me, Supey, we all know just how much we risk when we trust other people. We make ourselves vulnerable to being hurt, whether by betrayal from their hands or by having them be exploited against us… Its never easy to trust someone with your secrets when you do what we do. But you've known Canary and me your whole life and Clark cares about you too and Robin… Won't you take a chance and trust us? Tell us what's going on."

The room was silent one… two… three beats.

Then, Kon turned to the robot manning the matrix's consol. "Let me out Number 12. I don't want to be up here on display for the rest of this argument."

For a moment it looked as if the android would protest. The boy might now be conscious, but he was not fully recovered. But Clark repeated the order for him and Number 12 obediently disengaged the matrix field. The gold light reseeded, the membrane melted away, gravity once again took hold of the Superboy and he drifted down to stand on his feet. He hopped down from the solar-matrix.

"The lounge, then?" He asked.

"Pants!" Clark reminded him.

Number 5 presented the boy with a clean set of clothes; undergarments, socks, shirt, fingerless gloves, and of course, pants. When he was dressed all five of them returned to the scenic lounge to continue their polite argument.

While exiting the infirmary, Tim slipped close to Kon and commented, "I gotta say, I find your lack of Puritan modesty refreshing."

"Uh… thanks? I think."

When they returned to the lounge, the landscape outside the window was a wash of reds and pinks as the sun began to set. It was still snowing, but thinly and each little snowflake became a glittering jewel of color as the sun's light passed through it on its journey to the ground.

"Its beautiful!" Dinah gasped. "No wonder you built your base here in the middle of nowhere."

Next to her Nightwing scoffed. "Yeah, it's pretty and all, but look at the neighborhood. Good luck getting a pizza delivered here."

His joke succeeded in lightening the mood slightly. Everyone cracked some version of a grin –except for Nightwing himself, he laughed outright. Poor Dick, didn't anyone ever teach him not to laugh at his own jokes?

Kon was stone-faced as they sat down and his grim expression brought the mood back down to what it had been a moment before rather quickly. He glared at each of them in turn, starting with Canary, then moving his gaze to Clark, then 'Wing and finally to Tim. Finally, the Superboy began, "Before I tell any of you anything, I need you all to promise me that you'll do nothing. Okay? No matter what you think of what I say, none of you will take any action in response to it –at all! Do you understand?"

In almost perfect unison, all four of them frowned disapprovingly. Their mouths all becoming nothing more than thin lines on their faces. Already they did not like the way this was sounding.

"Why?" Clark finally asked.

"Because I asked you to and you want me to trust you." Kon replied. "If you can't handle that, then you can just go back to ignoring me and pretending I don't exist. See you in another six months."

"Kon-El, please just-"

But Canary cut him off. "Maybe it would be better if you spoke to me privately?" She offered. "Since you seem comfortable opening up to me about other things."

The Superboy heaved a sigh. "Honestly, Canary, yes, I would prefer that. But I also know that everyone else in this room is gonna demand some kind of explanation from me too. So, instead of being hounded for months on end until you all either forget, louse interest or are distracted, I'm better off just telling you all at once."

"You can trust me." Tim assured him. "I'm very discreet and not at all rash or impulsive. If you say 'do nothing' then I won't do anything."

Kon nodded, accepting his friend's assurances. He looked to Canary and Nighting in turn, and then finally to Clark. The birds all gave nods of agreement with varying expressions of displeasure. The Superman, however, grumbled in silent protest. Crossed his arms over his chest. Sighed.

Then, finally, he groaned, "Alright, fine. I want to know, so I guess I have to promise you."

"Thank you." Kon nodded. He took a deep breath. Counted to ten. Closed his eys so that he didn't have to see them, and began, "I started taking the stimulant to stay awake. Sleep is when I'm most vulnerable and have no defense."

"Defense against what?" Asked Canary.

There was another beat of silence before he locked eyes with the blond bomb-shell and said, "What you told me before is right, just because I'm not the only involved in incidents of psychic-abuse doesn't mean they affect me any less. In fact, because of my history with Cadmus they affect me more. …And they build up."

Everyone nodded. This was something they all had already guessed.

"There's no way to fight a telepath." He continued. "Not really. Unless you're also a telepath you will always be outmatched in that regard. But you can attack them physically; cause them break their concentration or whatever. But I can't do that if I'm asleep. So I can't sleep. So I started taking the udoliv."

"Okay." Nightwing nodded. "I understand that. Goodness knows Batman has a whole slew of homemade cocktails for similar purposes. But, he usually only uses them on cases when he knows there'll be a need for them. What I don't get is why you've been taking this drug when you're off duty. There aren't any dangerous telepaths around to mess with you."

Kon's next words were low and grave, but so heavy that they hit each and every one of his listeners like a punch to the gut. "I can think of one."

The lounge was silent for one… two… three beats. Outside, the sun dipped low under the horizon, casting the sky into dark violets and indigo. It was Canary who finally broke the silence. Uttering only one single word, yet carrying with it just as much gravity and consequence as Kon's had.

"M'gann."

Kon nodded soberly.

"But… she's our friend!" Behind his domino mask, Nightwing blinked in disbelief. "She was your girlfriend! You dated her for four years!"

"And I broke up with her because she tried to control my mind."

"What!?" All four gaped open-mouthed at him in horrified disbelief.

"Last year. While I was asleep, she slipped inside my mind and tried to erase my memories."

…


	8. Confrontation

They all reacted in the ways Kon predicted they would.

Tim, the youngest of them, but also the most calm and level headed to spite his age, remained silent. Resting his elbows on his knees and intertwining his fingers under his chin. The Boy Wonder was quiet, retreating into his thoughts to better analyze this newest of information.

Black Canary pursed her lips. She spent the past week investigating the reasons for Conner and M'gann's break-up, so she must have had her own suspicions. Kon didn't know if his words confirmed anything for her or were completely out of left field, but judging by the lack of shock and disbelief on her face, it was probably a confirmation.

Nightwing surprised him. Of the four of them, the Superboy had known him the longest and he expected Batman's first apprentice to offer a foreboding frown and grunt so that Kon would know his words were understood, but give away nothing else. Instead, the former Boy Wonder put a hand to his head muttering a soft, "Oh, my god…" Followed then by a slightly louder, "Totally not asterous."

Clark's reaction, while Kon predicted it down to the very wording, still managed to annoy him the most. The Superman's eyes went wide, his mouth forming an almost perfect 0, before quickly closing itself and morphing into a horrified frown. He leapt to his feet. "Why didn't you tell us this before!? Do you understand how serious this is? We can't go around using our powers on our own allies! And with your history with mental tampering… What M'gann did to you, Kon-El, that was abuse!"

"Don't you think I know that!" The demi-kryptonian snapped back. "That's why I broke up with her."

"But, why not tell someone?" Clark continued. "If she's willing to use her powers on you –the person she calmed to love- who's to say she's not also trying to control others on the Team? Something like this doesn't affect just you, Kon-El. Why are you still protecting her?"

Now it was Kon's turn to stand up. Snarling right back at the Man of Steel, "I'm not protecting her, I'm protecting you!" He glared up at his genetic parent, refusing to be intimidated. Then his gaze shifted and he gave Nightwing and Canary each their own dose of his intense crystal blue stare. "All of you. I'm protecting all of you. You want to know why M'gann tried to erase my memories? Because we were arguing and she wanted me to forget that I was upset with her. So, think for a moment, people. If she's willing to do that to me for disagreeing with her, what would she do if all of you start calling her out on her shit? If she starts feeling persecuted and backed into a corner."

Silence followed his words.

It dragged on for one… two… three beats before Tim lifted his head, gazing up at the Superboy, the little Robin said flatly, "Your logic is flawed."

Kon only blinked at his friend.

So, the Boy Wonder continued, "Point one, you claim to be protecting the rest of the Team by hiding what she did. But in actuality you are only putting everyone else at greater risk by keeping them ignorant of the danger she represents. Just because we know doesn't mean we'll act on that knowledge, but it will put us on our guards so that we're not take unawares. Point two, what you're doing is enabling. By not allowing M'gann to be held accountable for her actions you are sending the message that such actions are okay and your objections are nothing more than personal prejudice."

"That's not-!"

"Let me finish." Tim did not give him the chance to protest. "Point number three, Nightwing and Black Canary both are professionals and have been doing this job a lot longer than you have. They won't go blundering into confront M'gann like a battering ram. They will be very careful to make sure M'gann does not feel 'persecuted', but she does need to be held accountable for what she did and learn that it's unacceptable conduct between allies –lets take the fact that you were lovers out of the equation. And, my fourth and final point, if she does feel persecuted from being reprimanded for something that is most definitely an unacceptable act, its indicative of a deeper psychological issue that needs to be addressed."

More silence followed the Robin's words.

It was sometimes difficult to believe that he was only thirteen years old. He certainly possessed maturity and intelligence beyond his years.

Finally, Kon replied, voice low and somber, "She can wipe your mind. I don't want anyone I care about to be turned into a vegetable because of me."

Nightwing sighed, leaning back in his seat and massaging his temples. "You're missing Robin's point, Supey." He said. "This issue isn't about you, not anymore. This concerns the whole Team. If M'gann is willing to influence both allies and enemies with her telepathy indiscriminately, then she becomes a danger to everyone. I'm Team leader. Dealing with this issue should be my responsibility –not yours. Deciding how to handle this issue should be my responsibility –not yours. You don't make the call, I do. You should have come to me a year ago."

Kon glared at the former Robin. "You're going to break the promise you just made me."

"Yeah. I am." He nodded, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Because I have to. Because it isn't just about you. Because I have a responsibility to the rest of the Team, to protect them and keep them safe –even from one another. Stuff like this is why the police have the Internal Affairs department."

Kon sat back down, exasperated. They didn't understand. None of them understood, not even Tim with all his intelligence and wisdom. M'gann was a telepath, a very powerful telepath according to her uncle. There was no defense against telepathy, not unless you were also a telepath, and there were no other telepaths on the Team. If M'gann felt like it, she could mind-crush everyone.

Canary studied him for a moment after the Superboy sat down. After a prolonged pause she assessed, "You're scared of her."

The demi-kryptonian's head snapped up. Then, very slowly, he nodded. Kon didn't want to admit it, but she was right. He was scared of M'gann. She could harm him in a way in which there was no defense against. She could hurt the people around him in the same way. And if she in any way felt threatened, she would do it. Her visit to him at the farm last week was evidence enough of that. 'Don't make waves.' She said. To late to take back what he's said now, he made waves. All Kon could do now was hope it didn't build into a tsunami.

"Supey, if you're scared of her, we can protect you." Nightwing assured him.

"Its not just me I'm worried about." The Superboy reminded him.

Clark heaved a sigh, drawing everyone's attention. "Look, no matter what we decide to do, we're not gonna do anything tonight." He indicated the darkened window. "It's after dark and it's below freezing outside. You three are not going anywhere." He nodded to Robin, Nightwing and Canary. "I say we all take a break. It took Kon-El a great deal of courage to confess all this to us, lets give him some time to relax."

"I'm sitting right here. You don't have to talk about me as if I'm not in the room."

Tim turned to the demi-kryptonian, his eyes narrowing behind the whited-out eyes of his mask. "Do you want a break?"

Kon sighed. "Yeah. Let's take a break."

…

Clark insisted Kon return to the infirmary when the meeting adjourned. He protested, of course. But with a little help from Nightwing and Robin (mostly Robin), they finally managed to bully him into sitting down to finish his physical. They left Tim with him, trusting the younger boy to keep the Superboy in line and (mostly) cooperative while the adults held council in private.

The three of them retired to a smaller, more private parlor just off from the main corridor. The walls were made of the same kryptonian crystal, polished to a near glassy finish. But the lighting was dimmer, better suited for a rendezvous of conspirators rather than a meeting between friends. It was well furnished, more with efficiency in mind rather than comfort, which was odd considering its decidedly non-efficient lighting. In fact, to spite the crystal walls and one tall window (currently darkened by night) it felt much more like the Batcave than it did the Fortress of Solitude. This must be the Superman's mythical 'brooding room' where the Man of Steel came when he wanted to be less of a Boy Scout.

"Now, we decide how to handle this." Nightwing began.

"I already have an appointment with J'onn tomorrow." Canary began. She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight from foot to foot in thought. "I want to talk to him about M'gann's behavior before we do anything. If Conner's fears about her retaliating if confronted are founded, then I want another telepath with me when I do."

"I'm Team leader," the Nightwing shook his head, "confronting her should be my job."

"You do realize," Clark cut in, "that the more people confront her about this, the more likely it is that she'll feel persecuted and retaliate like Kon-El fears. This is a delicate situation and will explode if we don't keep it contained."

There was a beat of silence as the other two considered the real and frightening truth of Clark's words. Leave it to the Superman to always tell the truth.

"I won't be going with you to confront M'gann." He continued. "Three people is already to many. Instead, I'm gonna try and keep Kon-El here until the situation is dealt with. He doesn't need to be traumatized by this any more than he already has been. Also, those strange brain-wave readings bother me. I want to understand what kind of lasting damage he'll have from this. His heart problem can be fixed; I'm not too worried about that. His mental problems will be more difficult and I need to get an idea of what we're dealing with."

"Understandable." Canary nodded.

Nightwing only nodded. Then, to Canary he said, "He's right, though. Three people is to much all at once, especially to start with. Contrary to what Supey said earlier, there are ways to combat psychics and telepaths –Batman's a master of it, and I'm pretty good too. I'd like to speak to M'gann alone, maybe at the same time you're speaking to J'onn. That way you'll be close by if it turns out I do need help."

"Alright." Dinah nodded at the logic of this.

"So, you've got a tentative plan." Clark also nodded. "I'll have Numbers 3 and 4 make up rooms for you."

The Superman left.

…

"Please do not touch that." Number 12 said again, for what was probably the fourth time since Kon had returned to the infirmary.

The little Robin was exceedingly inquisitive, more so than Nightwing had ever been at that age. But his inquisitiveness was tempered by a sort of quiet but vigorous need to not just know, but to understand. It could be seen in his eyes, behind his mask, as he looked at the alien crystal-tech you could tell he was figuring it out, deciphering its workings, storing that knowledge, then running through scenarios of how said information could be used.

Sometimes Kon thought the habit was cute. Other times it reminded him a little too much of Batman and scared the shit out of him. At this precise moment, however, the habit was annoying. "Tim, just come here and sit your butt down!"

With extreme reluctance, the little Robin pried his attention away from the consol he'd been studying and pulled a stool over to sit next to the recovery bed the Superboy was currently sitting on while Number 12 fussed over him. Round his head, the demi-kryptonian wore a circlet of yet more crystal, it looked better suited to be a prop in a Michael Moorcock novel rather than any sort of medical tool. But it was kryptonian-crystal tech, not a costume prop. The circlet was supposed to measure brain-wave activity on all levels, not just conscious and sub-conscious, but non-conscious activity and functions as well.

"Fine." Grumbled the Boy Wonder and he humph'd with indignation. Then that damn inquisitive spark lit up his eyes again and Kon steeled himself for whatever the Robin was about to do next. "Hey… There's something I've always wondered… M'gann's an alien, so like, her pheromones or whatever wouldn't be the same as human or kryptonian pheromones. So, what attracted you to her in the first place? Don't say her looks, because she's a shape-shifter looks are meaningless."

Kon just stared at him for a few moments. Since becoming friends outside of the Team, the Superboy liked to think he had grown used to the little bird's non-sequiturs, random topic changes, and sometimes just downright bizarre questions. But this one was just plain uncomfortable. "There's more to a relationship than just pheromones and looks, Tim. Feelings play a bigger role. A physical attraction can evolve from emotional attachment even if such an attraction wouldn't have happened otherwise."

The Boy Wonder was silent a moment, processing his answer. Then, "Hm. Clark's kryptonian and he married a human. Their pheromones shouldn't work on each other either. I wonder, do you think kryptonians even have pheromones, or have they evolved to select their mates some other way?"

Kon opened his mouth to inform Tim of just how extremely uncomfortable this conversation was and, considering the fact that he was only thirteen, extremely inappropriate. But was cut off by Number 12 before a single reprimanding word could escape his lips.

"On Krypton, mating-pairs were matched through the Crown of Yuda, which scanned all citizens of suitable age to match compatible individuals. Matches were based off of genetic compatibility, personality, social cast, economic status, and numerous other variables. Once a pair was matched they-"

"Thank you, Number 12." The Superboy cut him off. "I think that answers his question. Don't you have numbers to punch or something? I wanna get this thing off my head."

"Hm…" Tim said in the way that tended to scare Kon. "So, basically, relationships were arranged by a computer. They met, got to know each other and then a physical relationship would evolve from the emotional connection they formed. Don't look at me like that, those are your words, not mine. Here on Earth, you don't have that Crown-thing so you ended up loving the one you were with. Because M'gann was there, you were the only two living at the Cave for a long time and you saw a lot of each other day in and day out… It was more a relationship of convenience rather than anything else. Yeah, I could see that."

"I'd really, rather not talk about M'gann anymore." Kon growled. "I think she's been discussed enough for tonight."

Number 12, to the demi-kryptonian's great relief, finished collecting his date and removed the circlet from the boy's head. Kon all but leapt off the recovery bed and was half-way to the door before Tim could hop off his stool and follow.

"Alright fine." The Robin said, catching up to the Superboy at the door-release panel. "Then lets change the subject. I wanna see more of the Fortress. Show me around."

…

The three humans spent the night at the Fortress with Robin and Nightwing bunking-up together and Canary having a room all to herself. At some point during the night, Tim made a comment about how big the Fortress was, Clark really could have sprung for more guestrooms. Dick then reminded him that when Clark first designed the Fortress of Solitude, it had only one bedroom to speak of. Since becoming friends with other heroes, founding the JLA and having Kon enter his life he's had to add a few rooms over the years. So, stop complaining and go to sleep!

Nightwing and Black Canary left the following morning as soon as the sun had risen enough to warm the frigid landscape enough for their winter stealth suits to withstand the chill. Clark stayed behind, as did Tim.

The little bird heaved a sigh and reached a hand up to remove his domino mask. "Whooh, nice that Ms. Lance finally left. Now I can take this thing off." Then, to Kon, "Ya wanna go to one of Clark's terrariums and do a couple rounds of Surya Namaskar?"

"Yeah, sure."

The two boys strolled down the corridor and disappeared around a corner. Clark stared after them bemusedly. Surya Namaskar was Sanskrit, right? It was a yoga thing. Superboy did yoga now? Wow, a lot really had changed in the months since he'd been gone.

…

Number 8 and 4 dropped Canary and Nightwing off just outside the main entrance to the Mount Justice Cave, bid polite synthetic farewells, and then sped back off to the north –returning to the Fortress.

"You got a watch in that belt of yours?" Asked Dinah as they entered the Cave together.

"Eleven o' one AM." Replied the Nightwing casually. "What time is J'onn coming over?"

"In twenty-nine more minutes."

"Okay. I'll wait until he arrives to talk to M'gann."

…

Dick changed into civvies. He wanted to put M'gann at easy before beginning the uncomfortable subject of how she used her powers. So it was a pair of kaki shorts and a navy blue polo-shirt, and, of course, his black-out sunshades that the Nightwing was wearing when he came up to the martian girl and her atlantian boyfriend in the common room.

"Hey." He opened, casually enough. Then to La'gaan he said, "I'm stealing your girlfriend."

"Excuse me!?" The Lagoon Boy gaped at him in utter disbelief.

M'gann giggled, deciding to play along with the joke. "Oh, didn't I warn you, baby? Nightwing has a thing for red-heads."

"It's the only reason why I hang out with Kid Flash." Dick nodded.

La'gaan just made a croaking sound.

"Aw… I think we broke him." M'gann teased. She placed a not-quite-so-chase kiss on the Lagoon Boy's cheek and whispered in his ear. "Its probably just Team stuff. Nightwing just likes to troll sometimes, always has ever since he was Robin."

She followed the former Boy Wonder out of the common room, through the hangar and out of the Cave. Dick turned them down a rarely used hiking trail and they strolled at a leisurely pace. It was casual and friendly, slightly intimate, but friendly.

"So, what's up?" She asked.

Nightwing heaved a strategically dramatic sigh. "Megs, I've got a problem." He said. "Since I became Team leader I don't think people wanna talk to me anymore. It feels like they don't see me as a peer anymore. Now I'm 'the boss' and no one wants to talk to the boss."

"Oh, I'm sure that's not true." She insisted sympathetically.

He shook his head forlornly. "I got an angry call from one of the mentors that recently returned from the Rimbor mission yesterday. They were pissed off at me because their protégé apparently developed a medical condition and had an episode yesterday. It was the first I'd ever heard of it, but the mentor was pissed at me because they trusted me to keep the Team safe in their absence. But that's so hard to do when no one will tell me what's going on."

"But that's so unfair." She patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. "You do the best that you can. You're our Team leader, not our baby-sitter. Its more their fault for not telling you they had a problem, than it is your fault for not knowing. Who was it and I'll have a talk with them?"

She ran through the roster of mentors that were part of the Rimbor mission in her mind. There was her own uncle, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Icon… Rocket was a member of the League now, not the Team, so she wasn't Nighwing's responsibility. Wonder Girl seemed fine; M'gann had just seen her and Batgirl yesterday. Superboy was a kryptonian clone, so the only medical condition he could possibly have that she knew about would be clone-degeneration, but even if 'Wing had known about that there wouldn't be anything he could do about it. That left Batman's latest protégé –the third Robin.

The entire bat-clan was exceedingly protective of the little bird. Ever since the second Robin was tragically murdered by the Joker. Yes, if something happened to Robin and Nightwing hadn't known about it, that would be a terrible blow to him indeed.

"It was Supey." He grumbled, sounding harassed and indignant. "Did you know demi-kryptonians could have heart problems? I didn't."

"Conner!?" She blinked, completely taken aback. Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. She knew the Superboy was developing a new power, a telekinetic power, but that should in no way lead to a heart condition. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Dick groaned. "Clark gave me a pretty good chewing out about it. Apparently, Supey's been stealing stuff from his medicine cabinet and gave himself a heart attack. And, of course, it's my fault, because Clark left Supey in my care"

M'gann still regarded him skeptically. It certainly sounded like Nightwing was just looking to confide in her, seeking sympathy from a friend. But at the same time, she had worked with this man for the past five years, ever since he was Robin, and she knew just how flawless an actor he could be. She extended a telepathic feeler to better gauge his motives for this conversation. But when her mental probe brushed against his outer barrier, all she registered was the melody to Frere Jacques.

"Why was Conner doing drugs?" She asked.

Nightwing heaved another strategic sigh. "I still don't know. Not really, anyway. He said it was because he didn't want to sleep. But that just raises the question of why he refused to sleep and that was a question he wouldn't answer. Not to me, not to Clark."

M'gann pursed her lips. She and Conner didn't exactly talk anymore, but she had an idea of why he would be leery of allowing himself to become so vulnerable –even if it was for only a few hours each day. Conner had been sleeping when she made her attempt to alter his memories and sway his opinions on how she used her powers. He probably feared she might try again. Or if not clearly feared it, then at least had formed an association with sleep and psychic attack. Once again, M'gann tried to probe Nightwing's outer web, but that damn song seemed to be blocking her like an extra layer to his mind's natural barriers. Of course, Batman's first apprentice would have training in mental shielding.

"So… why are you telling me all this?"

Nightwing stopped walking and stared at her through the darkened lenses of his shades. He schooled his features into an expression that was more pleading than accusatory. "I think you know why."

…

"Wow, you're actually doing yoga." Clark could not believe it as he watched Tim leading Kon through the motions of something they called the 'Sun Salutation'.

"Shut-up, Clark." The demi-kryptonian muttered as he transitioned from adho mukha to plank pose. "You're interfering with my prana."

"Is that a thing?" Asked the Man of Steel.

"Yes." Both Tim and Kon answered, irritation coloring their voices.

"Okay. Sorry."

"We never returned to our conversation last night." Kon announced from plank pose before shifting to chaturanga dandasana. "Did 'Wing and Canary ever decide on anything? I'd like to be there when they confront M'gann in case… Just in case."

"Don't worry about M'gann." Clark shook his head, watching his clone shift his position yet again and trying not to giggle at how silly he looked. "They're taking care of it."

Kon froze in mid-transition. He straitened, turning to stare at his genetic-parent. "They're not doing it today are they? Right now!? No!"

"Kon-El, don't worry about it."

"No!" The Superboy said again. "They can't rush into this! I spent a whole year trying to figure out how to handle M'gann. They don't get it! They don't understand how dangerous she really is!"

Kon was making his way to the terrarium door.

Clark placed himself between his clone and the exit. "You're not getting within a thousand miles of that woman until this is handled."

Tim halted his own progress through the Surya Namaskar to assess the two kryptonians. After a moment's consideration, he decided that a change back into his winter stealth gear might be prudent. Kon looked like he was ready to bolt if Clark gave him the opening and if it came to blows, with his new power he could take the Superman unawares, temporarily disable him and then speed off to the Cave. And like hell was Tim gonna let him go alone!

The Boy Wonder slipped out, muttering a soft, "This looks like a private conversation."

"Get out of my way, Clark!" Snapped the Superboy. "No one knows M'gann like I do. If you people aren't going to let the matter drop and do nothing like I asked you to last night, then I have to be there! Now, you can either move out of my way, or I will remove you myself."

The Man of Steel paused momentarily to blink skeptically at his clone. They both knew that in a strait-up physical confrontation Clark would win. Kon might have been cloned from him, but the boy did not have the full range of kryptonian abilities and the ones that he did have were not as strong or as potent as the Superman's own. How Kon-El planned to remove him, Clark couldn't even begin to fathom, and that would have amused him were it not for the deadly serious glare in the demi-kryptonian's crystal-blue eyes.

"Move!" Kon snarled.

"No." Clark insisted.

Kon's glare morphed into a focused stare of intent. His eyes narrowing at the Man of Steel. He took one half-step forward, his back-leg thrust out behind him, his arms raised above his head, palms together. Clark recognized it as one of the yoga moves he and Tim had been practicing only moments ago, 'warrior 2' or something. Then, the Superboy brought his arms down; spreading them wide with a dramatic SWSH of his shoulders and Clark was hit by an invisible force. Not just hit, but thrown back!

He sailed through the terrarium door which Tim had left open and only managed to catch himself before his back contacted the glass-like crystal of the opposite facing terrarium. The Superman stared at his clone as the boy hopped through the open door. He hadn't touched him, no hand or fist had connected, yet the Man of Steel had been thrown.

Kon assumed another yoga stance. "Stay here, Clark." He said. "Don't get in my way."

'Psychokinetic abilities.' Dick had said that the brain-wave charts were similar to those of people with psychokinetic abilities. Starting at his clone, Clark croaked, "You're a telekinetic."

"I am." He nodded.

Then turned his back on the Superman and sprinted down the corridor.

Clark caught up with him in the space between breaths. "You can't fight a telepath with telekinesis."

"I know." He nodded again.

"Kon-El, please…" Clark placed a restraining hand on the clone.

The Superboy turned to him, crystal-eyes ablaze with emotion. "Its my fight, Clark." He growled low in the back of his throat and though he couldn't see it or feel it, the Superman was sure the boy was gathering his telekinetic power for another strike should he need it. "If our roles were reversed you would do the same thing. We fight our own battles; we don't wait for others to do it for us. That's what makes us heroes."

Clark did not remove his hand from Kon's shoulder. "I'm sorry, but she's hurt you enough. Just this one time, let someone else handle it."

Kon sighed. "I'm sorry too."

"Wha-!" The blow did not come from the front as the first one had -as the Superman was expecting. He was instead struck, rather hard, on the back of the neck. This time, the invisible force felt focused and shaped, like a karate chop to the base of his skull where it met the neck. Clark's vision blurred and he had the sudden sense of falling before everything went dark. The boy's telekinesis apparently hit way harder than his fists.

Kon sprinted through the crystal and white-stone halls to the hangar –looking for Sphere. But she had not come to the Fortress with them yesterday after his heart attack. Clark had flown them both here himself. Kon had no idea how he was going to get to Mount Justice. Maybe he shouldn't have knocked Clark out after all. Maybe he should have instead tried to reason with the man and convince him to fly them both to the Cave. Damn it! He should have thought ahead. The Superboy sank into a crouch, half-despairing and half-contemplative.

A small white snow boot appeared by his side, a white-fur lined gray cape dangled behind it. Kon looked up at Tim.

"Thanks for waiting." Said the Boy Wonder.

"I have no idea how to get to the Cave." Confessed the demi-kryptonian.

Robin looked down at him in bewilderment. Then said, a if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "You have telekinesis."

"I know." He replied. "But Sphere isn't here and there's no bat-plane or arrow-jet on hand…"

He was smacked in the back of the head by a white-gloved hand. "You have telekinesis!" Tim said again, more annoyed this time. "What's stopping you from levitating yourself?"

The Superboy's face lit-up with an excitement he didn't know he'd been suppressing for five long years as the implications dawned on him. "I can fly!"

"In theory." Nodded the Boy Wonder, and without warning or invitation he climbed up onto the demi-kryptonian's back. "But a theory isn't a theory until it's tested, it's merely a hypothesis. So, come on, Peter Pan, let's test it. Think happy thoughts."

The Superboy hooked his arms under the Robin's knees to hold him more securely on his back while the Robin wrapped his arms around the Superboy's shoulders, locking his gloved hands just over his collarbone. Kon took a deep measured breath, held it until the count of ten, then exhaled and repeated the process. He felt Tim shudder against his back as his TK field enveloped the little bird. After sixteen breaths he muttered, "Okay, I'm gonna try it."

At first nothing happened.

Then, slowly and unsteadily, they began to rise. Not very much. Just a few inches off the crystal floor, but it was a start. Kon took another breath, his brows knitting together with concentration. They rose higher and higher until, "Careful now, we're still inside remember."

The Superboy opened his eyes a moment and they sank several feet in the air before Kon got himself under control again. "Concentration… this takes a lot of it."

He floated them through hangar door and they were instantly hit with the rough arctic wind, so cold it was almost jagged as it blew. Kon was thrown for a moment, not because the cold bothered him (although, he was a tad concerned for Tim on his back), but because now he had two forces to combat to stay the course –gravity dragging him down, and the wind pushing him east and farther north the opposite of where he wanted to go. The Superboy grit his teeth, circling his prana, letting the energy flow through its natural channels within his body before bringing it out to stabilize and keep him both airborne and on course.

When he was confident they weren't about to plummet to Tim's death and his extreme discomfort, Kon sped off. Heading south, along the coast.

The land streaked beneath them in lines of white and gray. Then white, green and brown, then just green and brown, then green, brown and gray. Green, brown, gray and sandy. Brown and gray. Sandy, green and gray. The colors of the blurred landscape changing as they passed over forests, cities, beaches…

Finally, Tim shouted over the wind, "Kon, that was the Cave, turn around!"

The Superboy decelerated slowly enough to not turn his passenger into jelly before making a sharp U-turn and, sure enough, they arrived at Mount Justice. Kon landed just outside the main entrance, floating down between the trees and letting Tim down off his back. They were about to enter the Cave when their attention was jerked in another direction by a startling, almost strangled sounding, cry. Both Robin and the Superboy turned to peer down a rarely used hiking trail.

…

"So… why are you telling me all this?"

"I think you know why."

M'gann studied his face, or rather, what of his face that could be seen. She couldn't tell what look his eyes held, her vision could not penetrate those black-out shades, but the arch of his brows, the set of his jaw, the vulnerable bottom lip –it all projected a sense of pleading. Begging and beseeching for answers.

"What do you want me to say?" She asked.

"I want you to tell me what happened between you and Supey." He said, voice low but without infraction.

M'gann took a step back from him, here eyes narrowing. "You already know, don't you?"

"I want to hear it from you." Nighwing informed her. "There are two sides to every story. I want to know yours."

"You want to know mine." She repeated, voice turning feral and predatory. "Its all Clark's fault really. It didn't start until he finally got his head out of his ass and began mentoring Conner. His opinions about things started to change, his views on certain… tactics became more rigid. He became naggy and overbearing. Always trying to control me. Telling me what I should and shouldn't do… How I could and couldn't use my powers…"

"And how were you using your powers?" Dick asked softly.

Her eyes locked with his impossibly dark shades. "In a way that benefited the Team." She replied evenly. "But he didn't see it that way. Tried to get me to stop. Telling me I couldn't do that. As if he had any right to dictate how I use my powers. I don't tell him not to smash things when he starts lumbering around like a tank with feet. So, one night, I thought I'd finally do something about it. Nothing to big or major, just tweak some things here and there, augment his opinions… But he woke-up before I could finish."

"M'gann," Nighwing began softly and seriously. "Yes, your powers are your own, but there are some things that you should not do with them. I don't know what Supey was objecting to, to begin with so I won't comment on that, but you cannot do something like that to your own allies. This Team, it's built on trust. We can't trust someone who's willing to invade our minds over a moral disagreement. Obviously, you're pulled from active duty, and… and I'm sorry, but I might have to pull you from the Team entirely. I… I just can't trust you with the others if you were willing to do that to your own lover."

Her eyes flared red for a moment before they subsided back to her usual auburn. "What do you mean 'pull me from the Team entirely'?"

"I mean, you wouldn't be able to live at the Cave anymore. I'm responsible for everyone's safety and I have to think of them too."

"You think I would hurt the rest of the Team!?"

"I don't know." Dick confessed. "And that worries me."

"Where would I go?"

"That's up to you."

"What about Garfield?"

"He's still a minor. So he stays with his legal guardian, which is not you."

"You can't do that!" She snarled, her eyes once again flared a vivid crimson, but this time the color did not subside. The martian girl levitated a few feet off the ground and glared down at the Nightwing. "You can't take my baby brother away from me!"

Dick's analytical skills had only a moment to remark that it was interesting that she hadn't mentioned La'gaan at all before a searing pain lanced through his head and drove all thought away.

"Your block is good." She growled, her voice sounding distant and muffled to his ears, but thunderous and booming within his head. "But I can still break through it. You can't kick me off the Team and you can't take my baby brother away from me. Don't worry, Nightwing… Richard… Richard Grayson, you won't remember a thing…"

Dick tried to gather his wits about him again. Form the melody that Bruce had taught him. If not force her out, then at least block her from delving any further. But he just couldn't concentrate. He tried to plead with her. Beg her to stop. No! Don't! Get out of my head! But he couldn't. All that escaped the Nightwing's lips was a startling, almost strangled sounding cry.

…


	9. Catharsis

J'onn shifted his weight uncomfortably as he listened patiently to Dinah's narrative. It troubled him greatly, but at the same time, it all seemed to make a kind of horrifying sense. When she was done explaining, all the Manhunter could ask was, "Have you spoken to M'gann yet?"

"Nightwing is doing that now." Replied the Black Canary. "They're outside right now."

"I would very much like to speak with her as well."

…

Richard Grayson's strangled cry died down and was silenced. The man lay on the ground beneath where M'gann hovered –unconscious. His resistance finally gone, his barriers down, his mind open. It hurt her to have to do this to him, to Nightwing, to Robin, little trollish Robin with his mischievous grin and odd wordplays. Richard Grayson… Dick. She never knew his name before. For some reason it didn't seem to fit him, 'Richard' was to upright, to strait-edged, to dignified. But 'Dick', oh yes, that was Nightwing, that was Robin. Dick.

It was a dick move to try and remove her from the Team, to separate her from her family on Earth, the family she had chosen. To try and take her brother from her. But lucky for her, it was also an easy fix. Just a quick tweak of his memories of the conversation, then a bit deeper to more in-depthly edit the things Conner had told him and… Damn it! Black Canary, Superman and the other Robin had been there too! Well, that put a bit of a wrinkle in things. If it had just been Nightwing –Dick- then it was a quick fix. But there were other people to corroborate with Conner, it would be more damning for her now to have Nightwing return to the Cave thinking she was all sunshine and roses after so many others knew where he had gone and why he wished to speak with her.

'Well played.' She did have to give him his due props. It was the perfect failsafe because it was so damn simple. 'You would make an excellent Batman one day.'

Now the question was: 'What do I do now?'

"M'gann!"

Whatever she might have decided, it didn't matter. At that very moment none other than Conner himself came sprinting up the trail towards her. The newest little Robin just half a step behind him, dressed in his winter stealth uniform for some unknown and ultimately irrelevant reason. She turned to face the pair, not quite sure what to do. Wipe their minds too? All three of them, right here? She could do it. But it would take more concentration, which meant more time. That raised the risk of yet another member of the Team stumbling on her. This was quickly snowballing into a situation she could not control and the martian girl had no idea what to do!

Robin froze in his steps the moment he spotted Richard Grayson laying prostrate beneath her. "Di- Nightwing!"

Conner barred his teeth, reminding her so much more of Wolf in that moment then of the Superboy. His eyes snapped between the unconscious Nightwing and her hovering above him. "What did you do!?"

"I…" Her words faltered. "Nothing yet."

"'Yet'?" Robin echoed, voice halfway between an apprehensive choke and a vehement snarl. He fell to his knees next to the Nightwing and immediately began checking the man's pulse and breathing. Those things were fine. But then, those things were not really what either of them were worried about at the moment. He shook Dick's shoulders. "'Wing? Are you there? Wake up. Please just be asleep, or unconscious, or whatever and not brain-dead. 'Wing?"

Conner placed himself between the still floating M'gann and the prostrate Nightwing with Robin kneeling over him. He glared up at her, his throat unusually tight. Heart hammering against his chest in a way that couldn't have been good. He worked enough moisture into his mouth to ask, "Is he…? You didn't…?"

He couldn't bring himself to finish the questions, but she knew what he was asking. "No, I didn't." She said. "He's still intact."

Relief flooded the Superboy's whole being. She had not mind-crushed him, not entirely. Nightwing was unconscious, not catatonic. He could recover; he would not become a vegetable. Then the relief shifted, morphing into another emotion that hardened him enough to say, "M'gann, this has to stop. Its one thing to mind-crush and brain-bend enemies, but Nightwing is a Teammate, Nightwing is a friend. Come back to the Cave and we'll get you some help."

Her eyes blazed once again. "Are you insane? Back to the Cave after what I just did to our precious leader? They'll crucify me!"

"I won't let them." Kon promised. "The Team looks after our own and you're one of our own."

Her eyes once again blazed with a crimson glow. "If you think that then you're just as naïve as Superman. This is all your fault anyway!" She snarled. "I told you not to stir-up trouble! Now look what you made me do. Nightwing's laying there because of you!"

At that comment the Robin lifted his head. All his training in psychology and transference registered her comment and processed it as either a psychological tactic to make Superboy doubt himself, or else M'gann's attempt to convince herself that nothing was her fault, thereby exercising herself of any blame and only succeeding in feeding her persecution complex. In M'gann's own mind, she was the victim. Robin couldn't seem to vocalize any of this, however. All that managed to make its way to his lips was, "You're crazy."

…And with that single comment their confrontation with Miss Martian shifted from words to actions.

Violent actions.

Superboy had just enough time to throw up a shield made from his TTK before the wave of M'gann's own telekinetic attack slammed into them. Her strike hit like a battering-ram against an armored wall and both gritted their teeth against the strain. The air around them crackled with the energy of two opposing TK fields, the trees rustled though there was no wind, the grass bent. The Robin stood-up and, hooking his arms under the Nightwing's armpits, tried to drag the man out of the immediate battle area.

Whether drawn by the distress of everyone's psychic signatures, the clash of telekinetic powers, or because they were simply already on their way out it wasn't clear, but Black Canary and the Martian Manhunter soon appeared on the forest trail. Dinah broke into a sprint the moment she saw Robin dragging an unconscious Nightwing, and Superboy facing off against Miss Martian. J'onn flew to intervene between his niece and the demi-kryptonian, but was stopped by the Boy Wonder.

"J'onn!" He called. "Nightwing… I need you to look at Nightwing! M'gann said she didn't do anything to him yet, but… I need to be sure."

The Martian Manhunter doubled back to kneel beside the unconscious man, opposite the Robin. He placed his hands on Dick's temples, extending his telepathic senses, examining and assessing. After a prolonged pause he looked back up at the Boy Wonder and said, "There is some stress damage, but he is otherwise fine. Some short-term memories seem to have been altered."

"Altered…" The Robin echoed slowly, as if he were reaching a conclusion. Kon had said that M'gann tried to erase and alter his memories in order to sway him to her opinions. She wasn't trying to wipe his mind completely. Apparently, the martian girl tried to do the same thing with Dick. Alter his memory of his conversation with Kon so that the Superboy appeared to be the villain and Miss Martian was the innocent victim. Some explaining would need to be done when the Nightwing woke up. But that was small and inconsequential. "So, he's fine. Good."

The Boy Wonder stood, pulling off the fur-lined cape of his winter stealth gear. It really was far to hot for this temperate a climate. Up in the arctic at Clark's Fortress is was practical, back here at the Cave it was just pain silly. He left the heavy cape to crumple on the grass next to Nightwing, barking a question that sounded far more like a command, "Can you or Canary watch him for me!"

Fishing into his belt, the Robin leapt into the air and launched two robinrangs at M'gann. Neither one connected with her, however. The martian girl dogged one, shifting her body shape to avoid it and then deflected the other with her telekinesis. But they were distraction enough for the Superboy to launch an attack of his own with his telekinetic power. Once again assuming virabhadrasana, channeling his prana and focusing it on Miss Martian. He launched a psy-blast that sent M'gann flying smack into the trunk of a nearby tree with a very unpleasant sounding THWAK! for accompaniment.

"Did… did M'gann just throw herself?" Canary blinked, not seeing a source for the blow that sent the martian girl flying.

"I am sensing a second telekinetic field." The Martian Manhunter informed her. "I might be mistaken, but… I believe its originating from Conner."

"What?"

Had she been human, M'gann's spine would most definitely have been broken. Luckily for her, she was a white-martian shape-shifter and didn't actually have a spine to break. It still hurt though. Like a fucking bitch! Miss Martian held onto a broken tree branch to steady herself as she glared down at the two boys. Superboy and Robin. Apprentices of Superman and Batman. The World's Finest. "Oh, this is so cute." She gave a mirthless laugh. "What are you supposed to be now? The Junior Finest?"

It was empty banter and they all knew it. The martian girl was just stalling. This situation was already out of her control and she had no idea how to handle it. Nightwing alone she could take care of. Conner and Robin, they could have been dealt with too –eventually. But now Black Canary and her own uncle were on the scene and M'gann had no idea what to do. Should she mind-crush them all? Uncle J'onn would put up a fight, but she learned years ago that she was stronger than him. She would have to break him first to keep him from shielding the others, then a quick telepathic blast to render the rest of them unconscious as she'd done to Nightwing.

After that it would be just a simple matter of altering their memories to fit whatever scenario made her appear innocent was most believable. Conner on the other hand… Him she might have to erase completely. She had tried to get along with him after he left her and for almost a year it had gone alright. Granted, they almost never spoke to one another outside of Team business, but they had been civil to one another. Then he had to go and start this damn drama, bring the rest of the mentors and Team leaders down on her head. She couldn't alter his memories, he would know that she had, instead she would have to wipe him clean, then make the other's believe that she had done it in self defense. That would work. He attacked her, she had no choice but to defend herself. It was an accident. She didn't mean to turn him into a drooling vegetable. It just happened that way.

That would be her new plan.

Another psy-blast from Conner's TK field hit her in the side, breaking her concentration. Then it morphed its shape into an invisible tentacle that wrapped itself around her mid-section and dragged her down earthward, slamming M'gann to the ground. She glared up at the Superboy –Conner- her former lover.

"And here I thought you didn't like tentacles." She teased.

He cringed noticeably.

She took the opportunity to regain her footing. But no sooner had the martian girl reclaimed a standing position than a bolo made of thin but strong black cable and weighted with two vaguely bat-shaped weights at the end wrapped itself around her.

"Keep your head in the game, Superboy!" Robin snapped.

M'gann grit her teeth in annoyance. She was the most powerful telepath that she knew of, but that didn't mean much if she couldn't get a moment's reprieve from their onslaughts long enough to actually concentrate! If she could just get a handle on their minds, then the martian girl would once again have control of the situation, control of them, control of everything. There was no way for a non-telepath to combat a telepath. They would not be able to retaliate mentally. But they sure as hell can retaliate physically. Break her concentration. Which is exactly what they were doing now. Not giving Miss Martian a moment's peace to collect her thoughts and launch her offensive.

"What is going on here!?" Admittedly, this question was already a tad belated on the part of Black Canary, but it still had to be asked. Although, by this point, really the answer should have been obvious.

No one bothered to answer the Black Canary, however. Instead, M'gann shifted her form, becoming as inconsistent as water and melted herself out of Robin's bolo. She slithered through the grass as a snake.

Kon snatched her up with his bare hand.

M'gann shifted her form again, this time into that of a giant spider. She pinned the Superboy to the ground with one massive spider-leg to the back. He let out a snarl of pain that was muffled by a face full of grass and dirt.

Two tiny pellets hit her in the back, bursting on impact, and covering M'gann's back in a substance that burned her martian skin. She let loose a scream of discomfort and fell backwards, shifting her form once again –this time back to her standard humanoid shape- and rolled in the spring grass in an effort to quench the burn.

Superboy drew himself up into a crouch. "You're hurting her!"

Robin just looked at him through the whited-out slits of his mask. "Look what she did to Nightwing! She can do the exact same to us given the opportunity to concentrate. Is that what you want?"

Kon ignored the little Robin, instead focusing his tactile telekinesis. There wasn't a single inch of M'gann's body he hadn't touched. He remembered the feel of her under his hands; the weight of her in his arms… and sent out his TTK along the grass, under her back. He separated the chemicals from Robin's bombs –magnesium oxide and glycerin- from the organic bio-fabric of her uniform. The burning sensation subsided and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Idiot." M'gann groaned.

"How we treat our enemies is what separates us from the bad guys, M'gann." Said the Superboy, climbing to his feet.

She stayed down on the ground where she was. "So, I'm your enemy now?"

"I don't want you to be."

Kon reached a hand down to help her up.

M'gann took the offered hand, but she didn't use it to pull herself up. Instead, the martian girl shifted one of her legs into a whip-like tail and swatted one of his feet out from under him. Unbalanced, all it took was one sharp yank from Miss Martian and the Superboy was the one on the ground instead, with her on top of him, straddling his thighs, pinning him to the ground.

"Superboy!" Robin exclaimed.

It was then, in that moment with M'gann straddling Kon's narrow hips that the others from the Cave came out wondering where everyone had gone to.

La'gaan and Garfield came striding up the path, but both paused when they saw the odd scene before them. An unconscious Nightwing in the arms of J'onn. Canary standing and starring at Robin, Superboy and Miss Martian as if she had no idea what to do. Robin with his hand in his belt, fishing out another weapon. And finally, Kon pinned to the ground, M'gann sitting on his lap.

"Uh… what's going on…?" Asked the Beast Boy.

"Gar…!" M'gann gasped.

"Angelfish?" La'gaan looked like he'd just walked in on an affair. They might as well have had their pants down if his expression was anything to go by.

"La'gaan, this isn't what it looks like!" She was quick to assure him.

The Superboy twisted beneath her, trying to maneuver his head enough to look at the new arrivals. He got a partial view of La'gaan's face and instantly felt sorry for the irritating jerk. He might be rude most of the time, he might be obnoxious, he might go out of his way to insult and irritate the demi-kryptonian… But he really did love the martian girl. Within a few short seconds, Kon's dislike of the atlantian was quickly transformed into pity.

"What's going on?" The Lagoon Boy echoed Gar's question.

"I…" Once again the martian girl's words faltered.

Black Canary took this opportunity to step in. "M'gann," she began, "why don't you let Superboy up and come inside so we can talk? I want to listen to everything you have to say."

Miss Martian's attention shifted from her boyfriend and little brother newly arrived, to the Black Canary standing in front of them. She was about to snap back with something hostile and snarly, denying that Canary actually wanted to talk to her after what she'd just witnessed, after what M'gann had done to Nightwing, after what she knew she'd done to Superboy… Then her eyes shifted to the unconscious Nightwing held in her uncle's arms.

Nightwing… the first Robin… Adorable little Robin with his trollish grin, boyish computer pranks and amusing word plays. Richard Grayson… Dick. She had also thought of him as a little brother at one point in time. Not quite as much of a brother as she thought of Gar, but still family.

She looked down at the Superboy pinned beneath her. Her ex-boyfriend, her former lover, her former mate… 'Instead of working it out and compromising like a healthy functional couple…' He said to her that day at the farm, and it was true. Instead of talking with him about his disapproval of her conduct and working through it together, reaching a compromise like a functional couple, she had instead tried to erase the memory that he was ever angry with her to begin with. She had tried to control him no better than Cadmus had.

'My god, M'gann! Do you understand what a violation this is?' He asked that night, the night he woke-up in the middle of her attempt and in his agitation ended their relationship right then and there. At the time M'gann thought it was nothing more than an over-reaction. He was distraught and would come back to her. But he never did… and she always knew why. The knowledge was always there like the shadow of a fact in the back of her mind, but she didn't grasp the full implications behind that fact until this moment.

…No better than Cadmus.

The martian girl looked back to the Black Canary, her eyes suddenly glassy, and said, "I have a problem."

…


	10. Words Said

Clark groaned as the golden glow faded around him and he stepped out of the zetta-tube and into the Cave's hangar. He had a splitting headache but tried his best to ignore it for the moment. He was going to have a very strongly worded conversation with his clone when this was all over –provided said clone was still well and able to talk when this was all over. The Superman wasn't quite sure how long he'd been out, but the moment he came-to, he rushed off to Mt. Justice to make sure the Superboy didn't do anything he would do.

The hangar was forebodingly quiet.

The Superman stretched his hearing, scanning the halls and corridors of the Cave for any sound that might indicate a battle of any kind was still going on. There were none. Clark crossed the empty hangar and entered the common area. Mal, the Team's communications tech was seated on the couch sorting and filing reports. He did not seem the least bit distressed, but Clark didn't know if he should take that as a good sign or a bad one given the nature of the issue.

Still, he ventured to ask, "Did Kon-El come by here? Do you know where he is?"

"He's in the infirmary." Mal replied matter-of-factly, not bothering to look up from his task.

Clark zoomed out of the common room with nothing to announce his exit but a rush of air. He burst into the Cave's infirmary, fearing the worst had happened to his little brother, and was pleasantly surprised yet also thoroughly embarrassed to find that the boy was fine. He stood at a bedside, starring at the newly arrived Superman with a mixture of startled confusion, amusement, and ever-so-slight alarm. Robin stood on the opposite side of the bed, also looking at him in slight confusion. He had changed from his winter stealth gear into the normal red and black Robin uniform.

"Aw, Supes, you didn't have to rush all the way down here to see me." Joked the man lying in the bed. "Batman didn't even come."

Clark just gaped at Dick's smiling face, his eyes obscured by dark black-out shades. "Nightwing?"

"You were expecting maybe Flamebird?" Kon-El smirked.

"Oh, be nice." The Robin chastised him. "He's probably still recovering from shock after learning about your new power, on top of that nasty bump you gave him."

At the mention of that, the Superboy flushed apologetically. "Yeah… Sorry 'bout that. Is your head okay?"

Clark reeled for a moment. The last he was aware of was that Nightwing and Black Canary were going to talk to M'gann about her conduct and Kon seemed to behave as if it would turn into a life-or-death situation if he wasn't there. When Clark got to the Cave, he had half-expected to be greeted by a distraught Canary tasked with the unpleasant job of informing him that M'gann had done the worst to Kon-El. Instead, here was Kon standing, joking, apologizing and just generally acting like a normal teenager. On the other hand, Dick was the one that seemed to have been hospitalized.

"What happened?" Asked the Man of Steel. "Where's M'gann?"

…

Virescent green skin faded and shifted into a fair Caucasian peach. M'gann looked up at Black Canary and her uncle. "Okay. I'm ready."

La'gaan held her hand while they fitted an inhibitor collar around her slender neck. As the collar flared to life, the shape-shifter felt her body go static, it felt as if a phantom limb that she didn't even know she had was suddenly bound and permanently immobilized as it suppressed her telekinetic power, and she had the sudden and irrational sensation of going deaf as her telepathy was shut off. The world had suddenly become such a static, confining and quiet place.

M'gann looked at herself in mirror. The figure of Magen Morse looked back at her, short red-haired, fair-skinned, and naked but for a simple bathrobe that La'gaan had provided for her. This would be her form from this moment onward. From now until Black Canary decided she could return to the Team. Her powers taken from her, suppressed by the inhibitor collar she now wore around her neck. Magen ran one slender human hand over the cool metal band.

"I'll have to go clothing shopping…" She muttered absentmindedly. "Since I can't shape-shift, I can't make my own. I guess turtle-necks are gonna become my signature look now."

"M'gann, this doesn't have to be permanent." Canary reminded her.

"I know." She responded, still studying her reflection. She traced over the auburn eyes framed by pale peach skin, the delicate chin, slender neck… Her eyes skipped over the collar and instead continued onto the narrow shoulders, the slender arm draped in the sleeve of La'gaan's bathrobe, the hand still enclosed in his… He gave her a reassuring squeeze, she did not squeeze back. "I know."

…

It was not until M'gann had gone to bed for the evening –earlier than she usually did- that Superboy was cornered in the halls by the Lagoon Boy. He stood in the center of a narrow passage, effectively blocking the demi-kryptonian's path. Arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Kon-El. He said nothing.

"Do you wanna hit me?" Kon offered.

"I am thinking about it." Admitted the atlantian.

"I'll let you. Just this once. One free hit, for the part I played in what happened to M'gann."

"'For the part you played…'" La'gaan echoed. He stood silently a moment, considering, then shook his head in a negative. "I'm not gonna hit you, old chum. But… I do want to know… Is it true? The reason you broke-up with her last year, is that what really happened? M'gann never told me why you left her and… I guess… It bothered me."

The Superboy's expression softened, but the Lagoon Boy couldn't tell if it was sympathy or understanding that he was now looking at. When the demi-kryptonian spoke again, his voice was wistful. "M'gann is a very complicated woman." He explained. "She has deep emotional scars that travel back to her childhood on Mars, because of them it's hard for her to trust people entirely. I'm not surprised she never told you why I left her."

"You didn't answer my question." La'gaan noted. "Is it true? The reason you broke-up with her."

Without infraction, Kon asked flatly, "What reason did you hear?"

"She tried to control your mind."

"Yes, its true."

"Shit." The atlantian breathed.

They stood in silence for a long moment after that, La'gaan contemplating this confirmation and Kon studying him. Finally, after the silence dragged on long enough, the demi-kryptonian asked, "So, now that you know, what are you gonna do with the information?"

The Lagoon Boy was silent a moment longer before finally answering, "Nothing. I know what I've always wondered about. Now, I'll probably spend the rest of tonight digesting the information and freaking out over all the possible implications. But tomorrow, I'm gonna wake-up, go into my girlfriend's room with breakfast for her, put my arms around her and remind her that I'm not you."

The Superboy considered this, a slight scowl darkening his face, before he replied, "La'gaan, you are either a far stronger man than me… Or else, the single dumbest person on the planet. I can't decide."

The atlantian gave him a lopsided grin. "I feel the same way about you." He admitted. "Especially knowing what I know now. It takes a special kind of strength to leave an abusive partner, and I admire you for recognizing what she did and getting out. But, it also takes a special kind of strength to know and understand a partner is abusive and choose to stay with them and support them as they seek help."

"I have a different opinion, but I'll spare you my 'sanctimonious speech'. Its your life, you're free to ruin it as you see fit."

"She can't use her telepathy anymore." La'gaan reminded him. "Thanks to the inhibitor collar."

"That doesn't mean her behavior pattern will instantly change." The Superboy reminded him. "It'll be a long time yet before Canary decides its safe for the collar to come off."

La'gaan heaved a dramatic sigh. "Say what you want. But at the end of the day, I still want to be with her rather than be alone."

"That just shows your own weakness and dependency issues." Kon took a step forward and squeezed past the Lagoon Boy. After a few paces, though, the demi-kryptonian paused, turned, and said in a voice that was commiseration embodied, "La'gaan, in regards to M'gann, if you ever… feel out of your depth, give me a call."

The atlantian hesitated for only the briefest of moments before nodding. "I'll keep that in mind."

…

The scandal was a hot topic within the Team for several weeks. But as spring transitioned into summer, people lost interest in Miss Martian's conduct and penalty, and talk turned to other things. Vacation plans, those that still attended school would be off for three months. Crime rate statistics, murder rates went up in summer. Just general relative 'normal' life stuff, because that was as close to normal as life got for the Team.

"So, my birthday's also in July." Tim informed the Superboy one day on the beach in the middle of their yoga practice. It had become something of a weekly routine of their's now.

"That's a non-sequitur." Kon commented without the slightest pause between poses.

"I just thought you should know." The Robin explained. "'Cause I figured you didn't."

"Is this Robin-speak for 'I expect a gift'?"

"Is that Kon-speak for 'I'm not getting you anything'?" Tim shot back, a lighthearted grin on his face. It was nice bantering with the demi-kryptonian, it was as lighthearted and easy as bantering with Dick, but not nearly as cheesy. "I'll be turning fourteen, by the way."

"I'll be turning six."

The Boy Wonder winced at being reminded that while he may look older, the Superboy was actually eight years younger than him. It sometimes slipped his mind because Kon acted the age he looked –sixteen. Sometimes he even acted a bit older. They were both old for their ages. Perhaps that was why they got along so well?

"I'll get you the latest action figure that all the six-year-olds are wetting themselves over." Tim promised.

"Fine. Then I'll get you the latest monster-collector game that all the fourteen-year-olds are cumming themselves over." Kon vowed.

"Alright, then."

"Okay, then."

…And it was then, as the two boys were exchanging knowing smiles because they both knew they had just created something that would turn into an inside-joke for years to come, that M'gann walked up to them. She was barefoot in the sand, wearing a pair of Daisy Duke cut-off shorts, and a cheerfully bright yellow top, sleeveless but with a high neck that just managed to cover the inhibitor collar she still wore.

"Hi." She said, that one word causing both boys to stop mid-pose and turn their attention toward her. "Can I… speak to you?"

Tim disappeared before Kon could even give his reply.

The Superboy fidgeted in the sand awkwardly. "Listen, M'gann…"

"I'm sorry." She cut him off before he could go into full 'sanctimonious speech' mode.

Kon froze, not sure what to say to that.

The crash of the surf on the sand sounded loud to his ears. Gulls cawed overhead, scavenging for something tasty on the beach. A crab scuttled under a rock. All around them, the world went on turning, but for Conner and M'gann, standing on the beach, staring at one another… time seemed to freeze.

Finally, after the waves churned seven times and the gulls rested on the rocks, seeking the crabs that lurked there, the Superboy spoke again.

"I've had this dream." He began. "Ever since I was liberated from Cadmus, the same dream. I'm sitting at the head of this table, and all around the table are people who tried to manipulate me. At first it was just Desmond and a couple of G-gnomes. Then Lex joined the table, then Queen Bee, Psimon, Doctor Destiny… I could go on. But one person that I never expected to see at that table, M'gann, was you."

There was a beat of silence.

And then… "Is this the dream where they open your skull and carve your brain like Thanksgiving turkey?"

"You know it!?" He was alarmed.

Her fair skin colored a very human shade of pink. "Sometimes… when we slept together, you would… project."

He nodded his understanding. "Last year, M'gann, you joined in that dream. You have your own place of honor at the table, at my right hand, just opposite Lex. You're one of them now. At least, that's what you are to me. So… when Canary decides you're ready, when that collar comes off and you rejoin the Team, I've still got your back. I'll still protect you on missions; I'll cover your ass, and keep you from dying, or getting left behind. But that is all I'll do. I will not speak with you outside of Team business. I will not hang out with you. We are not friends. You're one of them. So… thank you for the apology. But I can't accept it, because I can't forgive you. Because I can't trust you."

She was silent one… two… three beast.

Then, "I see." She pursed her lips. "So that's it then? That's all that needs to be said, or will be said between us?"

Now it was Kon's turn to pause before saying, "There is one thing. Last year, on the night that… on that night, I asked if that was the only time you ever tried to control me with your powers, before and you said that it was. Is that true? Was that night really the only time, or were you re-writing my memories throughout our whole relationship?"

This time the silence that dragged on following his question was almost unbearably long. The waves grew softer as the tide reseeded, the gulls roosted. Kon could feel the sun traveling low in the sky.

"I…" She finally said. "I'm… not ready to answer that."

He only stared at her.

She lowered her eyes. "Guess I just did."

And those were all the words said between them.

…

END


End file.
